F Sharp Above High C
by JMK758
Summary: 6 years after the Tenctonese ship crashed in the Mojave Desert, Detectives Matt Sykes and George Francisco investigate death and worse. First published in Sardonac 20 years ago. If your Reviews indicate an interest I will publish future stories.
1. Seacret

Back in 1990, while _Alien Nation_ starring Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint was in its first run, I was inspired by the episode 'Eyewitness News' to create this story. Jean Lorrah of Empire Books published it in 1991 as the centerpiece of her magazine 'Sardonac'.  
The title comes from the National Emergency Alert System then in effect, something neither the show's Producers nor I ever expected one day to become outdated. They postulated that sound was very significant to the Tenctonese nervous systems, and that chord had a particular and memorable effect upon the Newcomers, so I guess we owe the change to the Tenctonese.  
If you don't remember the series or want a refresher, all 22 episodes and numerous made-for-TV movies are available for viewing and download at .com/TV_Season/Alien-Nation-Season-1-72358.  
As this is the 20th anniversary of the series and my particular contribution to it, I decided to pull this story out of my files, dust it off and present it in an updated form. Enjoy.

F Sharp Above High C  
by James M. Keane  
Chapter One  
Seacret

The night is still, the kind of Summer night when the air envelopes the unfortunate with stifling heat and the silence of the streets belie the inner certainty that absolutely anything could happen. However, it's a sensation that can't be denied.

Walking the streets of Los Angeles on such a night is to know the oppressive solitude possible only in such a sweltering city of ten million, where none who can avoid it venture out of their air-conditioned apartments. Those who do stray into the open do so as briefly as possible.

Ellen Pu and her sister Jackie walk the deserted streets on their way home from Ellen's job at Metropolitan Hospital. They don't feel the heat as oppressively as human women would, for the Tenctonese, bred for generations to adapt within years rather than lifetimes to wide varieties of environments, have been steadily growing acclimated to their new home on Earth.

The denizens of the planet Tencton, whose spaceship Gruza crashed six years ago in the Mojave desert, are humanoid save for having distinctive bald and spotted heads with patterns inherited along matriarchal lines. There are other distinguishing features, tonight only their heads mark the sisters as Newcomers.

Unfortunately, their social adaptability and acceptance over the past 5 years doesn't match their physical capacities.

x

Ellen considers herself lucky. Trained as a Medical Officer, she'd been retrained in human physiology to supplement her Tenctonese skills and has adopted a position in the Pediatrics Ward of Metropolitan Hospital. While Child Care hadn't been her first choice, it was an inevitable result of her initial quarantine and processing through Immigration and she finds it rewarding. She rather likes taking care of both Human and Tenctonese, or 'Newcomer' children.

Jackie, an aspiring model, found it harder to deal with Human lifestyles and prejudices. While the field of Fashion Modeling is not tight for Newcomers, extremely few of whom found an interest in the field, there were many times when distinctions between the species are very firmly drawn. Very few Houses produce cross-species fashions, and Agencies therefore hire Humans or Tenctonese, but very rarely both.

"If things don't get better, I'm going to have a hard time making my share of the rent."

Ellen nods noncommittally; it's the same familiar story over the last 5 of 9 months and she already knows where this is going. The money does come, the balance made about every five weeks so three months age she just wrote off a payment and restarted the 'clock'. She'll soon have to do it again.

But this time the familiar story is sharply sliced by shattering glass from a window high above and several buildings ahead. A piercing shriek leads the falling body that tumbles amidst the shower of glass, the scream abruptly silenced as the body slams into the concrete with a sickening crunch. The tinkling of late arriving glass seemed to go on like a macabre echo.

Both women had been transfixed in horror, but when the body hit the cement Ellen broke out of her paralysis and ran ahead, followed much more reluctantly by Jackie. Lights are already coming on throughout the street. The windows, whose glass kept cool air trapped behind them, open wide, but several close again almost immediately. One look at the nude body at the curb, however, is enough to tell Ellen that help is useless; the Tenctonese woman's body lies contorted upon the ground, pink blood welling up about the fractured hairless skull.

Jackie averts her eyes but Ellen, to whom death is no stranger, is unable to look away. Already a crowd is forming from the building beside them and along the street. Not surprisingly, the attitudes she can read in the eyes of the approaching people vary according to their species.

xxx

The sun that assaults the city with its merciless rays promises clear skies and sweltering heat, even more so than yesterday, and nothing is done for race relations for people to realize that a significant percentage of the population feels the oppression less than those whose ancestors had thousands of years to adapt to their native world's challenges.

The damage to Earth's ozone layer, caused by universally but too late banned Chlorofluorocarbon products such as Freon, has resulted in steadily rising temperatures throughout the globe, something to which Newcomers have greater adaptability, having been introduced initially to a 'globally warmed' Earth.

The activity in the Detective Bureau Squad Room of this LAPD Precinct is at times so feverish, with multitudes of people arriving and departing, that cooling the room is usually an exercise in futility. The Department has budgeted two air-conditioning units for the huge chamber and they're hopelessly overwhelmed, as well as being perennially 'too far away'. Proximity to one of them is a choice and well-envied position, though the advantage tends to be mostly psychological.

Detective Sergeant Matthew Sikes, whose position is neither choice nor enviable, sits sweltering at his desk, which he shares as a facing pair with his partner. He wears 'cool' slacks and a many-years-old 'Simpsons' tee shirt, yet only the cooling fan of the computer to his right provides imagined relief. It is countered, however, by his partner's habitually natty insistence upon showing up for work in white shirt, sports jacket and tie.

"How can you do that?"

"Do what?" George Francisco, who'd originally been designated by Immigration Officials 'Samuel', asks, feeling quite undisturbed by either the room's heat or his partner's.

"Wear that outfit - and sit here looking cool as a cucumber on a day when we'll be lucky if it drops to 85 by midnight?" He slaps his computer. "We're gonna have a hell of a lot of down time today."

"I do notice that the colorfulness of your speech does change with your comfort, but ignoring the fact that we Tenctonese adapt well to your world, it having a very small range of climates, there is a certain image for the Department to maintain."

x

There are days Matt simply wants to rip the Potniki spots off his partner's bald pate. "George, look around you. We're all cops here and you're the only one in a tie. Not one other guy–" At that moment Captain Bryon Grazer, elegantly arrayed in a blue, three piece suit, steps out of his glass enclosed, air-conditioned office at the left wall. A blast of frigid air comes out with him, only to be beaten into submission by the large room.

"Sikes, Francisco, I've got one for you. Nice suit, Francisco."

"Thank you, Captain."

Sikes' soto voce contribution contains words George, for all his studies, had never before encountered, but though Grazer can't hear his words he can see his expression.

"It's a shame you feel that way, Sikes, but it turns out I can give you a break and let you cool off some."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. Go down to the Morgue."

Sikes resists the temptation to tell the Captain to get his own dates. He knows how far he can push, but since Grazer doesn't seem inclined to go far from his door, it means the team must come to him, something Sikes doesn't object too strenuously to – for the seconds he can enjoy the draft.

"A Newcomer named Victoria Seacret went out her window last night, thirteen stories. Question is, was it suicide? Her human roommate doesn't seem to think so. Find out. I figured it's perfect for you, Sikes, seeing how you know the neighborhood." He hands him the report sheet.

"Geez." It's less than a quarter mile from his home. He half-glares at the Captain but decides to hold his tongue; Grazer knows the rules, and if he decides to ignore them there's little Sikes can do about it. What he seemed to be saying was 'you're the resident Newcomer / Human expert, so it's your baby.'

"I have a unit picking up the roommate; she'll meet you at the apartment building."

Grateful for any legitimate excuse to get out of the hothouse the Department calls a Squad Room, Sikes heads for the door beside the useless though unaccountably full coat rack. As he reaches it, however, Grazer calls to him, an obvious tactic of letting the entire room hear his words. "Don't you think Bart Simpson's a little too young to be hanging around a Squad Room?"

"Don't have a cow, man," he replies as the door swings shut.

xx

"I fail to understand your continued irritation lately," George says as they wait for the elevator.

Sikes bites back the snap he'd been about to aim at his partner; neither the heat nor his biology are his fault – well, maybe his biology is. "Look, I'm sorry, it's just this heat, as in too _much_."

"Well, I'll admit the last five days of temperatures over 90 degrees are a bit much, but–"

"A bit much? It's a lot much! Humans aren't made for this kind of … stuff. I don't know how you guys can take it."

"Well, it helps when you're bald." The line, said so matter-of-factly, catches Sikes so off guard he laughs, which does make him feel better. Taking note of his own perennially too-long hair, he has to agree.

xx

The Morgue is much more comfortable, a consequence of the many individual refrigeration units that line the wide left wall, the 'bleed-off' of which allows Dr. Lois Allen, the human Medical Examiner, to wear her long white smock indoors. "Hi guys," she calls, pulling a plastic liner filled with bloody latex gloves from its container, sealing it and dropping the bag down a nearby chute. "What can I do about you?" She's known the pair too long for a combination of yellow 'Bart Simpson' tee shirt and suit buttoned to the neck to be notable to her.

"Howdy, Drac, just came in to check out a few bodies."

"Didn't know you were so desperate, Sikes."

"We're here to see a Newcomer named Victoria Seacret," George explains quickly, determined to cut off another round of verbal fencing. Really, Matt and this woman engage in so much of it that he sometimes expects they will either resort to dueling with scalpels or wind up copulating on one of the metal tables, neither prospect being one he wants to witness.

"Right over here," Lois replies, leading them to the refrigeration units. Placing her hand on the latch of a waist high door three columns from the right wall, she turns to caution them. "Not a pretty sight; a thirteen story fall onto the back of the head never is."

She pulls open the door and slides out the metal platform to reveal a woman's body covered to her shoulders by a blue shroud and the detectives see she hadn't overstated the warning. The back of the Newcomer's head is caved in where she'd taken the force of the impact.

"Her body's covered with glass cuts from going through that window, but the cause of death is the shattering of the Occipital and Parietal bones of the skull driving jagged fragments through her brain as well as shattering of her third through fifth cervical vertebrae, rupturing and breakage of the levator scapulae muscles - broken neck - and fracturing of both scapula, that added to tearing and dislocation of several Tenctonese-specific muscles."

"Positive ID? Anything found on the body?" Sikes asked.

"There was nothing found on the body, Matt; she was naked as an egg. Witnesses at the scene identified her, residents of the building she jumped ... fell from." She knows better than to draw this conclusion.

The detectives already have much of this information and read it while in the elevator; the Patrol Unit went up, got into the apartment, the roommate returned home at the height of the night's investigation….

x

"What else did you get?"

"Forensic evidence of recent sexual activity, penetration, all the classics, including motive sperm in the vaginal canal."

"Human or Newcomer?"

"Human, and I make the time of death no longer than an hour afterwards, possibly as little as a half-hour. There are indications of sexual stimulation in her system as well, her body seemed to still be actively reacting as it would to such stimulation; constriction, lubrication and so on, when she died. Even with a Human woman I would hesitate to say the event took place longer than about fifteen minutes to a half hour before death."

The usual result of sex isn't flying through a window. "Do you think she was raped?"

The woman shakes her head. "Rape is a legal term. I found penetration, sperm, lubrication, constriction; you'll have to tell me if she was a willing participant, I can only say she was an active one."

"Did you run a DNA check on the sperm?"

"Running now; check in this time tomorrow and I'll let you know what I have."

"What was Dr. Kildare's opinion," George asks, referring to her Tenctonese partner.

"He's on vacation," she answers with a trace of irritation in her tone. She's known the pair for a long time and tells herself George is neither questioning her competence nor exhibiting a preference to hear it from one of his own kind. It doesn't work.

"Frankenstein's out scaring up business?"

Sometimes, though she's as much as active participant in the verbal fencing as he is, she tends to lose patience with Matt's teasing. "Yeah, but Dracula's still here, so be careful or I'll bite you."

"Oh, Lo, you know you're still the only ghoul for me."

"OUT!"


	2. Language

Chapter Two  
Language

For the cross-town trip Matt turns up the air conditioner to full force, despite George's cautioning that the heat and humidity will only have a greater effect on him when he gets out.

Of course, Matt has to admit his partner is right and that does little to help his mood, or does it stop him from seeking as much satisfaction from the cold air as possible. "I've got a feeling the weather isn't the only thing that's going to be heating up by the time we're done. 'Sides, you're gonna feel the heat a lot more than I will."

"Matt, if it bothers you so much, I will change."

"Well…." Matt begins, then checks himself. "I'm only thinking of you. It's not necessary to look like you're going out on a date. You stand out – and looking at you so bundled up only makes me hot."

"You are not my type."

Matt isn't sure if he's going to choke or drive off the street.

xx

The 'death site' – how he hates those titles – on Murray Street is hard to miss. The moment they turn onto the street they see the black and white police car parked before it holds a pair of uniformed officers, human, and there's a woman in the back seat.

Above the building's main door the name of the building is, as are so many things in Los Angeles, written in English above Newcomer characters: 'Tencton Arms'. Tenctonese writing mostly resembles the readouts of cardiac monitors, the sharp peaks and valleys accented by horizontal marks of varying length, together with horizontal breaks in height and coupled with the occasional dots, none of it Matt has ever managed to decipher in six years. He does, however, need little help interpreting George's expression; his partner finds the name as pretentious as he does.

Matt parks directly opposite the marked police car, across the street from the huge grey building and, shields already tucked into belt and jacket pocket, they get out and cross before the unit, being certain their fellows recognize their right to violate the perimeter. While George pauses with the officers he goes directly to the rear door of the car, bends to look in. "Ms. McGiver, I'm Detective Sergeant Matt Sikes, this is Detective George Francisco."

The brunette woman opens the door and gets out. She's about mid/late-20's and wears a white blouse, brown skirt and grief so intense as to be palpable. Matt sees she's been crying, perhaps for a long time though he'll reserve judgment on that and upon its sincerity. From the file he'd learned she'd been dropped off by friends at about 2:30 this morning to find police cars, an ambulance, numerous curious bystanders and news of a dead roommate. "Hello," she says with a voice that couldn't get much tinier without fading away completely.

"We understand this is difficult for you," George tells her as the two uniformed officers, one Caucasian, one Asian, join them, "but we need to examine your apartment and to have you tell us all you can about what happened to your roommate."

She nods, seeming unable to say more.

Though no one is present on the street, Matt feels he's been recognized a dozen times already. "We're not supposed to be assigned to our own neighborhoods."

George, ignoring his partner's irritation, does have to admit he is the only one he's seen today who is 'dressed for dinner'. There's a store part way down the street where he might find a solution to that problem, however, and hopefully cheer his partner up.

Matt reaches the vestibule first, silently exulting in the cool air that wraps itself about him like a frigid lover and wiping off the first layer of perspiration from his forehead. Though the vestibule is accessed by an outer and inner door and the entire street facing wall is a set of huge windows, it's gloriously cool and Matt feels his spirits rise. Their footsteps echo hollowly in the spacious marble hall as they make their way to the elevator in the wall ahead.

The interior of the car isn't significantly larger than necessary to hold five people, and it looks out on every floor through a grilled window as the car is hoisted noisily upward. "Thirteenth floor," George muses. "In so many cultures, it is considered so unlucky it is generally omitted from structures."

"Maybe the Architect was a materialist," Matt says dismissively. It could certainly have been omitted from Victoria Seacret's life.

"We always considered the 13th floor lucky," Erika says wistfully. "Vicky said that if all the world didn't believe in the 13th being lucky, it left more for us."

"That's an interesting philosophy," George observes, particularly so in coming from a Newcomer.

Erika seems lost in her misery, unable to force out anything more.

When the door opens, admitting them to a lobby that runs left and right, they see before them a white on black sign emblazoned with the number 13. Below it, someone had hung a sign whose tape had long ago yellowed with age. 'Abandon hope, all you who enter here.'

"Dante's 'Inferno'," George identifies.

"Figures." The coolness that characterized the lobby and elevator has deserted them and Matt checks that he has his handkerchief. He expects to be able to wring it out by the end of the day.

x

It isn't hard to identify the apartment which is their target, the crisscrossing yellow tape marks it for all to see. There's also an adhesive sign adhered to the door, partially on the door, part on the frame, declaring t is to be a crime scene and forbidding unauthorized entry. The backing is so strong it cannot even be carefully peeled away without leaving evidence of the breach. Far from the anonymity an unmarked door would hold, these things draw attention.

Sikes, having received silent confirmation from one of the officers that he has an additional seal, writes his and George's initials on the corner and uses his pen to slice the paper.

Erika unlocks the door and George unsticks the yellow tape from the left side, allowing them to pass.

The living room before them is dominated by a large brown couch set in the middle of the floor, back to them and flanked by two lamp stands. A single closed door to the left apparently leads to the rest of the apartment, and to the right is the kitchen dominated by a square butcher block table. At the living room's left stand a stereo and a bookcase crammed with books together with a bubbling aquarium in which swim several small fish. In the right corner stands a three tier computer workstation with printer above monitor. The couch faces a television and entertainment center flanked by two red curtained windows. The left window has an air conditioner, turned off, while the curtain on the right flutters before the smashed window. The carpet has a large, square hole, about three feet to a side, cut to the bare floor in front of the television. Evidently the Forensics team found something of acute interest.

"I still can't believe it," Erika says, looking about the room, but mostly seeing the cut out carpet and the fluttering red drape. "I half expected to unlock the door and see her, and then you two would disappear and it would all be a dream."

Neither man comments on that.

McGiver struggles to speak normally, it's some time before she can say "By the time I got home she was gone, but I saw the blood by the curb and I knew. I looked up, saw our window and I knew."

"Do many Tenctonese live here?" George asks. He's already set the uniformed officers to gathering more pictures and other documentation of the scene, regardless of what their fellows might have done last night.

"A little less than half," McGiver looks up at him and stretches a smile that doesn't reach her eyes, "and yes, I think the sign's pretentious too. The landlord had visions of cornering the market, he's a Newcomer too, but a lot of the older residents didn't go along with it so in about 3 years of trying he hasn't had much to show for it."

"Do you have much trouble here?" Friction between Newcomers and Humans can sometimes be course.

"Not particularly. The Newcomers that are here are kind of like the Humans, middle class or slightly upscale, but similar enough that we get along. There's even an integrated couple."

"What about you?" Matt asks.

"We weren't a couple, if that's what you mean, but we were close." She still has the distant, haunted air of one still in shock, still trying to cope with an unaccountable situation. "Not too many people could understand - a Human and a Tenctonese being friends, though looking at you two I suspect you can."

"What can you tell us about Miss Seacret?" Matt asks, not wanting to get into the dynamics of their relationship and the year plus it took to get to this point. "Was she well liked?"

"Yes, she was. She was popular and everyone did like her." To Matt, it seems a trifle emphatic, as though she's trying to convince them her friend could be popular. Was it defensive, or something more?

It seems the young woman is still in shock. During the whole of their conversation she stands tensely, hands clenched before her so tightly the blood is forced from white skin and occasionally her eyes are locked onto the past.

x

"What did Miss Seacret do for a living?" He hopes she won't say 'designs lingerie'.

"She's … was a teacher; privately, actually, not connected to any school. Her students are … were mostly human and she taught Tenctonese language and culture. I teach human history and culture to the Tenctonese."

"I wasn't aware there was such a demand," George admits, impressed and slightly surprised.

"Enough to keep us here," Erika replies, her hand expansively sweeping the apartment. While not lavish, it's big, which in these days of burgeoning population is something of an accomplishment. "We met in Sociology at UCLA two years ago and got the idea for a partnership."

"Do you work out of here?"

"Yes, we do – we did, I mean." Erika's composure teeters precariously as she seems for a moment to come back into the present.

"You speak Tenctonese?" George asks, receiving the answer in that language, which begins a conversation that consists of obscure words that sound like a 33 record run backward at 45, punctuated by clicks and sharp tongue clucks, all of which leave Matt and the human officers quite lost. The men seem particularly nonplussed to hear an attractive human woman conversing in a language seemingly designed to twist a tongue into Gordian knots.

After what's, for him, a very magnanimous period, Matt's had enough. "Okay, Orgjay, ixnay on the Enctonesetay."

"Ah, of course, Matthew." George seems quite satisfied and Matt will find out later from him what the barrage of gookagobbletay revealed.

"Did she have any close male friends?" George asks, this time in blessed English.

"Of course! I said she has – had a lot of friends!"

George and Matt exchange glances. Clearly she hadn't understood. "I meant close _human _friends," George clarifies, leaning closer. Her blank expression is eloquent enough. "The tests indicated that she had had sexual intercourse with a human about one half hour before she died. The police reports indicated that her clothing had been found scattered throughout this room."

Erika had been fighting to maintain her self control, but George's words place the facts, which she had known, squarely before her eyes in a way she can no longer deny. Erika loses her battle, weeping bitterly into her hands. "Yes!" she cries brokenly, "I knew about the clothes! I knew she'd been on the floor over there!" She stabs the air with her finger, pointing in front of the television to where a large section of the carpet had been removed. "But I couldn't think she'd been …."

"Raped?"

Erika cries even more violently and Matt motions for George to desist. The woman is in the present now, and they don't want to drive her out again. As it is, only by close attention can they make out what she is weeping.

Matt particularly picked up on why McGiver jumped right to rape. Granted the floor, if indeed they did do it there, is less comfortable than the couch, but sometimes things just get started and move on. "How do you know she just didn't...?"

"She used to have students up here, but for lessons! No one ever tried anything! She wouldn't _permit_ it. She was only interested in Tenctonese – she told me she'd _never_ have a human!" Erika's speech grows more incoherent, the anger rising. With her first break all her emotions were released at once and she weeps inconsolably, and when she looks up her eyes are filled with terrible fire. "And some filthy _bastard murdered her for it_!"

"Can we see a record of her students?"

George obviously asked to distract her from her emotion, but Matt is unprepared for the violence of her reaction; she rushes to a cabinet beside the computer work stand, rips the wooden door open, yanks out a plastic ring binder and throws it at them. It misses, sailing to thump against the door. "Take it," she screams, "take it and find that filthy bastard _and make him pay for what he did to Vicky_!"

She turns, burying her face in her hands while George goes to her but halts, uncertain what comfort he could possibly offer as Matt retrieves the green binder.


	3. Diras'ti

Chapter Three  
Diras'ti

Matt Sikes direct the uniformed officers to take Erica McGiver with them, to return her to the hotel room she's using for the time that the apartment is a declared 'Crime Scene'.

"Okay, George, what did you pick up in that Berlitz barrage?" His partner and the young woman had spent quite a bit of time earlier conversing in that tongue-torturing language.

"Ms. McGiver's knowledge of the Tenctonese language is competent; she can carry on a reasonable conversation with it, but her accent is not the best. She could, as she indicates, teach it but her level of skill is conversational rather than fluent."

"Really?"

"Yes," George confirms, missing or ignoring the sarcasm. "One or two times she used an incorrect verb form, but on the whole I found her competence acceptable."

"So she'd be an okay teacher?"

"Of humans, yes. Not of Tenctonese, at least not of Emily or Vessna."

"Well, it's a bit early for Vessna, isn't it?" Maybe by the time the several month old infant is ready to talk–

"She said 'lanyu' yesterday." Seeing Matt's vague look, he elaborates "That is the equivalent of 'mama'."

"Get outta town. You must be really proud."

"Yes, I am." It's evident Matt is also proud of his goddaughter.

x

In the hallway an hour later, while waiting for the elevator, Matt and George look over the record of the late Victoria Seacret's language students. The binder contains detailed reports of each student's progress, appears to be updated to paper regularly and is printed with graphs as well as tables and text. The detail extends to the physical characteristics of each of her 34 students. "When that DNA test comes back, we may be able to use this to narrow the field."

"I'm inclined to think this record will be of little use," George counters and Matt has to agree with the pessimistic tone. The binder is separated by multi-colored tabs containing the students' names and, of the thirty four, nineteen are women of varying ages, leaving only fifteen.

"I know, but it's a lead and so far we're not swimming in them." He wipes his forehead, wishing he's come up with a better analogy.

In their canvass of potential witnesses, only an interview of the couple next door to the crime scene had been of any use. Frank and Rosalyn Martin had heard what sounded like an especially loud teapot whistle running unattended for several minutes, and only when it had been taken off the stove had they tried to get to sleep.

But Frank Martin was still awake a half hour later when the crash of the window, and Victoria's descending and suddenly aborted scream had torn sleep from his mind. Rather than going to the window, where the sounds had told him clearly that there was no help, he'd rushed to the apartment door, thrown it open and saw no one, nor did anyone ever attempt to leave the apartment.

Rosalyn Martin had gone to the window, saw the body far below and had called the police. It turned out hers was one of many 911 calls to deluge the board within a two minute span.

'I can't believe it! I won't!' Erika McGiver had declared before the officers had taken her, when Matt expressed his initial belief that the evidence seemed to point most strongly to suicide. Actually he'd said 'off herself', but it came out to the same.

'She wouldn't commit suicide!' Erika had maintained with fiery ferver. 'She loved life, had everything to live for. Someone _threw_ her out that damned window!'

x

But if this is so, and if Frank Martin had made it to the door as quickly as he stated - it's yet to be proven - how did the assailant escape the apartment before the police arrived? And now George isn't helping the suicide theory.

"A person committing Diras'ti often leaves–"

"What?" The door to the elevator opens, they get aboard.

"Diras'ti, a form of ritual suicide. We Newcomers place a high value on life and do not take it indiscriminately." He stops, and Matt knows he's caught short by the number of situations they've dealt with that belie the claim, but he apparently pushes these aside. "There are certain prescribed methods, none of which involve throwing one's self through a pane of glass to fall thirteen stories into the street. A Newcomer often leaves a note or some message to loved ones, yet none was found. Further, a person driven to such extreme action is frequently solicitous of others and does not want to cause undue inconvenience to friends and relatives."

"As if suicide wasn't inconvenient."

"Victoria Seacret seems particularly meticulous," he insists, holding up the reports. "You felt how hot that apartment has become; the air conditioner is useless until the window is replaced. Erika herself seems to feel Victoria would not have left her in such a state. Furthermore, the average suicide – even excluding that this is not one of the prescribed methods of Diras'ti – would open a window first, not take a flying leap through a pane of glass."

"I thought you would've told me Newcomers don't commit suicide."

"I wish I could. However, two hundred fifty thousand slaves crammed onto a single six mile diameter ship for years at a time, suffering tortures every day with no discernable way out; it was not unknown."

Seeing his friend's eyes, Matt can only conclude "I think you're developing a talent for understatement."

"I'm just saying–"

"All right! All right, Sherlock, you're so convinced it wasn't suicide, then where's the killer? The door's self-locking from the inside and Frank Martin was watching the hall until the Unit arrived. The only way out was to follow Seacret, so where's the killer?"

"I do not know."

The door slides open, admitting a waft of cooler air from the large hall which chills Matt and his sweat dampened clothes.

"Well, I want to interview the witnesses from the street. Who were they again?"

"Ellen and Jackie Pu, 1423 Parker, apartment 4A. Ellen works at Metropolitan Hospital, Pediatrics Ward and should be on duty. Her sister Jackie is a model and may well be best reached at home or through Agency."

x

Sometimes George's memory is better than a computer. "Okay, we'll hit the hospital first." When they step onto the street, the heat strikes them with a sledgehammer blow and Matt checks his watch. Noon. This is going to be hell.

"I'll be just a moment," George says, crossing the street but going around the car. "I want to purchase something in that store."

Matt gets into the car, starts it and, taking advantage of the opportunity again, turns the air conditioner on full. It's considerably longer than a moment before George emerges from the store, returns to the car and takes the keys from Matt, goes to the trunk and, when he returns a minute later he's disposed of his jacket, tie and white shirt.

"_Whoa_, George," Matt exclaims when he sees George's deep blue printed tee shirt, "that's a different look for you." The image is of Ezri Dax from 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'. Nicole deBoer is distinctly out of uniform, seated seductively upon a stool and wearing not a lot of a red bikini.

"Her speckles are very suggestive, not accurate for a Tenctonese but extend so far as to be _extremely_ erotic."

"Then you'd better not let Susan see you wearing that."

"Well, I have to admit you were right about my standing out. And with what you said earlier about what I was wearing making you hot, I felt I should give you a reason we can both live with."

xxx

Only a mile away a 17 year old Tenctonese woman, who at the age of 11 was tagged with the name Cheshire, her family with the surname Katt, steps off the elevator of her apartment building. Her arms are loaded with a heavy grocery bag and a young human, similarly burdened, steps off with her. "I can't thank you enough for this; I couldn't have made it alone."

"Think nothing of it. Believe me, I'm glad to help," he assures her as they walk down the hall to her apartment.  
"I really do appreciate this," she says, fumbling to get her keys from the gold shoulder bag. "My parents will be out for hours, but I have to have dinner ready when they get in." Opening the door, she turns to take the second bag from him.

"Don't be silly. I never leave a job half-done," he says as charmingly as he can. She smiles, pushes the door open and leads him in.

The apartment is fairly large, replete with reproductions of Tenctonese art and artifacts. Putting her bag down on a table, she turns and takes his as well. "As long as you're here, can I get you something?" she asks, setting down his bag next to her own.

"You sure can." He reaches into his pocket and a steady, high pitched tone sounds from the white device he draws from his jeans. She freezes, frightened; she knows that sound but from years ago. She doesn't recognize the instrument that produces it, but no Tenctonese woman, having heard that perversion, could ever fail to recognize it.

x

She backs away, fear making her breath race. "_Celine_! What are you doing?" Her gracious, solicitous helper stands before her, grinning in malicious anticipation.

"I think you know, honey."

She does know, but it's too unbelievable to be real and she clamps her hands over her ear valleys. It's hopeless. She needn't hear the sound, she _feels_ it, feels the rush of sexual desire building in her, threatening to consume her.

"Nee! (No) Stop it! _Sela_ stop it! Sela – Please!" She can't stop her mounting passions, can't concentrate on speaking English, not when ignited by that steady, abusive sound that plays on her nerves, that make the speckles on her back tingle and resonate in the serxi cluster surrounding the canal between her legs, that stimulate it to produce the moisture needed to ready her to receive the binnaum's catalyst and the gannaum's aklafluid for….

Hopelessly she tries to fight it, but the tension, the hot desire, the need _consume_ her. She can't fight it – no woman could fight this! She feels the terror well up in her, remembers the last time she'd heard this sound, remembers the time her mother…! "_Please_! I'll do anything you want – but sela _stop_!"

He draws closer, bringing the damned sound closer, tearing her nerves apart. "Oh, you'll do what I want, bitch – and very soon. You'll love it."

She feels her body respond with mounting passion, burning lust and can't stop it! Her breasts rub against her blouse with every gasping breath, they feel so maddeningly sensitive and her nipples grow erect, poke against the once soft material. She can feel the mounting need center about her vulva, the speckles that trail down her back feel alive in their sensitivity and she longs to caress herself, to ease the maddening need - but she doesn't dare!

"_Sela_!" she begs fearfully. She knows that if he doesn't stop, then it's only a matter of time before the sensations that fill her body, that threaten to consume her, rip all self-control from her. Her breasts ache to be touched, long to be fondled; her spots, even those on her head, tingle maddeningly. She looks at the rising bulge in his pants and her own crotch flares, moistens despite her misery. Tears flow down her cheeks as she pleads despondently. She hates her body's responses and can't stop them. Her body needs him! She has to have his – but that _sound_. She'd never let this tert touch her and she has no _choice_.

Terrified, she tries to bolt for the door but her uncoordinated body betrays her again. He catches her easily, pulls her roughly against his body. His hand across her back makes her Potniki speckles flare with sensation that shoots through her like lightning, some flashes of lust seem to dart directly down between her legs. Every touch flares through her; every touch, as she struggles, fires her passion worse.

x

Her steaming flesh, under that unrelenting, merciless assault of sound, betrays her with fiery lust. She tries to speak but only lustful groans and sighs emerge. She tries to resist as he yanks open her blouse, his hand fondles her breast possessively. She wants to fight him but he brings the whistling device down, presses it to her crotch and now the sound and vibration together tear at her nerves. She screams, her body convulsing into horrendous orgasm.

He forces her down onto her back, though no force is needed - her body willingly submits though her mind screams. She lies on her back, writhing and screaming as the sound tears every nerve in her body apart; but the sensation is centered doubly in her moistening, heating crotch. Her body is preparing, ready, to receive his aklafluid and this tert doesn't even have any!

He presses the device to her vagina and she shrieks, writhing madly, orgasms flaring mercilessly through her. He's driving her upward, she's already entered desonekarar, she can't think to even care what stage but it's _building_, ripping her mind from her!

She cries, shrieks, pleads for mercy as he kneels over her, ripping her clothes as her body flails in one monstrous orgasm after another. He's tearing her clothes off, the device pressed to her soaked crotch as she thrashes madly, shrieking as desonekarar builds from one level to the next, always upward, always ripping her mind as it tears at her body. His hand on her breasts drives her mad, her mind is blasted at his assault. She screams and screams, tears flowing down her face as he presses the tool to her convulsing labia.

"Yeah. You slag bitches all love it! You _love_ it!"

He mounts her, moving the device between her breasts, pressing them together about it, the sound blasting her nerves as she shrieks, weeping as she orgasms, feels him thrust through her clamping muscles, feels herself convulse around his brutal member that tears into her and she screeches as orgasm is stabbed by agony.

"_Yeah_, you sponge-headed bitch! You love it, _slag_! You all _love_ it!"

xxx

"It was horrible, Officers," Nurse Ellen Pu tells George and Matt. "I think I'll see that poor woman falling for the rest of my life." She sits in the small private office of the Ward's Chief Nurse, her uniform of crisp, immaculate white actually contrasts with her pink arms. The only other spot of color is the white on blue name tag, marked 'E. Pu', pinned over her left breast. She faces the two detectives, one human, one Tenctonese, yet it seems her eyes can only see that woman's broken body, the pink blood draining from her shattered head.

"What was the first thing you heard or saw?" Matt asks.

"The window breaking, then her scream," she says, barely meeting his eyes.

"When she fell, did you get a sense of whether she jumped or was pushed?" Even as he asks the question, he knows the answer would be inadmissible. However the body had been found fourteen feet from the base of the building, and the glass had scattered throughout the street; these could not have come from a simple fall.

"I'm sorry, Sergeant. As she fell, she tumbled, but I can't possibly say for certain which it was."

Matt actually prefers that answer to a definite decision. He likes a witness who doesn't take things for granted, who won't 'jump' to conclusions about what she saw.

"All right, can you tell us any more?"

"Do you think I might be called as a witness?" she asks apprehensively.

"I couldn't say."

George says something in Tenctonese that seems to reassure her, and as usual Matt has no idea what it is, which normally annoys him greatly. This time, however, he withholds his irritation. The Tenctonese grew up as slaves, many still equate the police with their Overseers, the Kleezant_sun_. Sometimes reassurance that they won't suffer in the presence of the police is necessary.

At any rate, they learn enough about what both Ellen and her sister Jackie saw to be able to put together a fairly accurate picture while keeping enough good will so they can come back for more information. Ellen has the mind of a keen observer and Matt hopes Jackie will be as reliable.

The last exchange is what particularly sticks in Matt's mind; it was after he'd asked her about her background. "On the ship I was a Physician's Assistant, but after Quarantine and processing I found I had to specialize in Pediatrics. It was a difficult adjustment, learning to deal almost exclusively with children, but now I like it."

"I don't understand." Processing by the INS assigned human names – at times very badly – but they didn't determine a Newcomer's occupation. "How'd Immigration restrict you to Pediatrics?"

She tapped her name badge. "I found out that, on this planet, Pediatrics is the only Medical discipline in which I could be taken at all seriously with a name like 'Nurse E. Pu'."

xxx

Unlike Ellen, Jackie Pu turned out to be a disappointment for the detectives. She wasn't inclined to talk, even in her native tongue, because she feared the publicity would hinder her chances of employment. Though they tried to assure her of anonymity, she was so unwilling Matt finally concluded they weren't going to get anything useful from her.

At nearly the end of their shift, the Detectives return to their office for the long process of preparing reports. As happens too often, those reports are and have to remain incomplete; hardly a crime on the first day of an investigation except to those with unrealistic expectations. This, however, isn't what bothers Matt most. Although they're no closer to solving the initial question of murder or suicide, he can't agree with George's contention, no matter how valid it sounds, that it was suicide. There is something wrong, something incomplete, something that seems to hover just on the edge, like mist barely seen but which one knows is there, if he can just–

"Pin-ups, Francisco?" Bryon Grazer asks, announcing his presence and completely derailing Matt's thoughts

"Sorry, Captain."

"Not half as much as you'll be when Susan sees it," Sikes predicts. "Come on, George, let's call it a day."

Actually, he has a long and lengthening list of things he'd like to call it.


	4. Desonekarar

Chapter Four  
Desonekarar

Returning home still in no enviable mood, Matt is neither surprised nor displeased when the first person he encounters is in his own second story hallway and turns out to be his neighbor Cathy Frankel just exiting her apartment opposite the elevator. The delightfully attractive Tenctonese woman lives across and down the hall from him and her presence, or even just the sight of her, is enough to blast Matt out of any possible funk.

Actually, with the exception of George's wife Susan – and this he'll admit to no living person – Cathy is the only Newcomer woman he does find particularly beautiful. He's seen many that can be _called_ beautiful, but only two he'd consider exceptional and this doesn't always come just from physical looks.

He has a friendship-relationship with her that can be likened to bobbing up and down in opposite peaks and valleys on fifteen foot waves on the ocean in two rowboats ... and he's 100 percent certain she knows exactly what she's doing to his hormones, nerves and, such as it is when he's around her, his brain.

What does surprise Matt this evening isn't seeing the woman dressed in her usual elegant silky attire – today it's a swoosh of a blue and green blouse that seems to flow down her body and carry the scheme to her mid-length skirt, but suddenly he doesn't mind the heat wave.

No, it's because for one not into personal adornment, this time she wears about her head, as another woman would wear a hair band, a thin silver band so deeply incised with Tenctonese script that it sparkles even in the inadequate hall light. "Hi, Matt," she exclaims, glowing with even more than her usual good spirits and he realizes it's been only one second since they'd seen each other. She shuts her door without turning from him.

x

"Hi Cath. How was your day?" 'Okay, so it's a stupid line,' he thinks, 'but who can think with–?'

"Marvelous!" she exclaims with a broad smile. She comes to him and gives him a brief Tenctonese greeting, touching the side of her head, near her temple, to his; but when she draws back he isn't so dense, seeing the way she subtly moves her head so that the band would glisten in his eyes, that he misses that she really wants him to ask about it.

The slim silver band seems to accent her multitude of Podniki spots, which in her case are so densely clustered as to almost give the illusion of very short hair. Few people are aware, or take the effort to notice, that one can read these markings, passed along male and female lines, to determine family and other distinguishing facts, such as Albert's denoting his status as a Binnaum. He's long ago noted that Emily, and later Vessna, take after Susan while Buck is more patterned after George. To date, he's never met a newcomer with Cathy's pattern – and he's sure they've book looked among the Newcomers, for to find similar patterning is to find family, however distantly related.

"A present?"

"Uh, huh." She says it with such a dazzling smile that, for a moment, he can't resist a twinge of jealousy. It's irrational, he admits; it looks way out of his range, but if _anybody_ should be giving her a gift like that…. "To myself."

Caught flatfooted, knowing his face must, as usual, be far too easy to read, the best he can manage is "Huh?"

"Today's my _Prinyante_."

x

Not wanting to repeat himself, he forces himself to say nothing. Her smile isn't without its element of teasing.

'Someday,' she determines, 'I'm going to draw him out, to make him admit it.'

"Naming Day. You see, we're born into slavery, so there's little use in celebrating birthdays like humans do. But our names are the first things given us by our parents, and they are often given in defiance of our slave status. The Kleezant_sun_ give us names at birth, but I never use _that_."

He's never been able to come close to duplicating that curious popping sound at the end of the word, but only Cathy seems able to make so ominous a word's ending sound 'cute'; and that's something he would never _dare_ say aloud. "And what is your name?"

"Jelana."

"Jelana." He thinks about it. Somehow, in her effervescence, he can see a touch of apprehension in her hazel eyes. "I like it." Immediately she brightens again. "You know, I think I like it more than 'Cathy'." He hadn't thought it possible for her spirits to pick up any more than they already were, and he has to admit that it makes him feel better as well. "Earth names generally mean something. Does yours?"

"Uh, huh," she assures him with a dazzling smile.

"What?"

She draws closer, very much closer, her hands move to his shoulders, her lips get closer, closer, they're a hair apart - Tenctonese don't kiss but Matt 's heart start to race in anticipation. "Someday," she whispers, her orange scented breath fluttering on his lips, "I just might tell you."

She withdraws and he's taken aback, but this time he doesn't mind. He'll let her have her secret … and play the game out later.

"Well, I don't know what Tenctonese custom is, but I think this occasion calls for a drink. Would you join me?"

"I'd love to." She tries to keep her feelings from showing _too_ clearly in her manner. A chase was no fun if the prize is scared off.

x

Not for the first time, as they walk the extra few steps to Matt's door on their right, he has the feeling that he's treading uncertain ground with the complexities of Tenctonese custom and society. He always felt there's one more surprise waiting for him, but he doesn't like surprises; too much chance to fail – or is it to succeed gloriously? But he feels very often with Cathy – _Jelana_? – like he's walking blindfolded through a garden where the flowers hide landmines, and to get too close to the flowers is to….

He opens the door to a mildly embarrassing surprise of his own. The television set on the other side of the kitchen/living room partition, is on, the local news program just concluding its announcements to the vacant room. He remembers watching it this morning at breakfast and then had absentmindedly departed for work. Trying to cover his embarrassment by pretending there's nothing unusual about it, he closes the door and, under the guise of meaningless small talk, enters the kitchen immediately to his left. "I've got a gallon of milk in." Both of them ignore the television and miss its warning announcement of a test of the country's Emergency Broadcast System.

"A _gallon_?" she laughs; to Matt a delightful sound. "You know, you have more milk than any other human I've ever met." She steps toward him, smiling suggestively, not missing his flicker of a glance at her legs in her almost long enough skirt, chosen today to particularly highlight just what he's been looking at before his eyes come up, before he remembers to look up to her eyes. "I think you do it so you can get me drunk and have your way with me."

He laughs, mostly to hide his feelings, the thought a little too close to home. This isn't the milk he keeps in the cupboard (beside the air fresheners) for when George visits, this is from the fridge. Fresh milk has about the same effect on a Tenctonese as slightly sweet or off-dry wines would on a human; she'd probably have to consume that whole gallon to get mildly tipsy. But he'd thought she'd enjoy it, which is why he keeps a steady supply of milk in the hopes that she'll visit.

He's more a beer man himself.

x

He turns, ducking his head in the refrigerator just as the high pitched tone of the Emergency Alert test fills the apartment. Head buried in the refrigerator, he misses Cathy's sharp gasp. He straightens several seconds later, turns toward her near the door and is surprised to find her collapsed against the wall, moaning sensuously, her body moving against her will. She can't keep her hips still as they grind sensually and she reaches up but forces hard to keep her hands away from her heaving breasts.

"Cathy?"

She's moaning, gasping, helpless and so obviously sexually aroused he feels an immediate and very human response to her distress, to her unwilling movements - but then he remembers an incident from so many months ago. The Tenctonese nervous system is particularly sensitive to sound and this sound has a powerful erotic effect. Feeling like an imbecile that he'd forgotten about that accidental revelation of one of the Tenctonese' most carefully guarded secrets, he hurries around the partition to the television and switches it off.

"Oh!" she exclaims, her system stunned and she starts to slide helplessly down the wall. He hurries back, reaches her, grabs her, supports her body in his arms.

"_Cath_? Are you okay?" She's gasping, moaning from lingering stimulation, from deep sexual arousal, and though she lay weakly in his arms, held close to him, he can feel her two hearts pounding arhythmically in her heaving chest. Her skin is pinker than it was moments ago and the distinctive spots covering her head seem darker.

x

"Thank you!" She welcomes a chance to be in his arms, but this is _not_ the way she'd intended. The speckles that taper down her back tingle as though alive, stimulated by the aborted sound. Even her blouse rubbing against them as she breathes is making her more excited. She tries not to breathe.

"What would've happened if I hadn't turned it off?"

"I wouldn't have been able to _control_ myself! I think I'd–!" She looks up and down his chest, all of him she can see while pressed so _close_, then covers her eyes to prevent him from seeing as they change from hazel ringed in blue to deep blue. She's trembling, stimulated to her very core and fighting to control it. Thank all the stars he hadn't touched her just then or she didn't think she could recover. As it is, she's fighting her body, her unexpectedly ignited lusts, trembling at the very edge of overwhelming arousal.

Her body is betraying her. Every time she breathes her blouse tickles her Podniki spots in her back and strokes her equally sensitive breasts. It's all going wrong. She'd wanted to just see him, have a nice evening with him; that's why she'd waited so long within her apartment, attentive to the sounds beyond the door until she heard the elevator, heard his distinctive breathing and could make it out in the hallway – but she hadn't meant to lose control of herself in the first two minutes! This is all going _wrong_. She'd never meant to get excited – that's _crazy_ – but she hadn't expected to be attacked by his television!

Matt is just as flustered as she is, but she can't allow this incident to deteriorate their relationship. She has to salvage it.

x

"Cath?" he calls, clutching her in his arms to support her better and without realizing it he presses his hand into her lower back.

It rips the breath from her and then, with his other hand, he does the worst possible thing – he starts stroking her, running his hand up and down her back, strumming her stimulated speckles that blast their sensations throughout her heated body.

"_Anailii_!" she cries, head thrown back, caught off guard by the unexpected surge. She hadn't recovered from the intense sexual stimulation produced by the abusive sound which drove her nerves insane and now his hands are on the physically most sensitive erogenous areas of her body. Other women are more sensitive to, say, the backs of the knees but the small of her back has always been her undoing. The sound alone was horrible enough but wasn't on long enough to destroy her control but now he's strumming her speckles and pressing his hand on the most sensitive part of her back–!

Passion flares within her with mind-blasting intensity. She can't speak, can only gasp, her best efforts to speak reduced to sensuous, aroused moans that can only–.

Her chest heaves against him, she can't help it and the sensation of his chest against her breasts is–! She can see _his_ panic as he holds her closer, tighter, now not strumming her but his arm is across _both_ shoulder blades at once! He's pressing more firmly into her and she feels his crotch pressed unaware to hers. No, _her_ body is pressing it to his! 'Help me! He doesn't realize! I'm not _ready_! He's not ready! _But he's driving me out of my mind!_'

x

Matt can feel the heat of her body, can see the characteristic pink of her flesh grow deeper, notices peripherally how the spots on her head stand out in sharp relief but he didn't know, in trying to help, that the seizure that's making her gasp and moan is his fault. He holds her closer, trying to talk to her but she seems not to hear him and the more firmly he holds her up the worse she becomes.

"Help me! _Nok'_desone!" she cries, that peculiar popping sound he's never come close to duplicating. "You're going to– _Help me_!"

"I'm _trying_!" He holds her closer, trying to support her writhing body, keeping her pressed to him for support, her chest heaving. He keeps one hand pressed to the small of her back, the other arm across her shoulder blades, keeping her upright.

She can't stop writhing against him, driven further and further out of control, feels her moistening crotch rub along him and she shrieks.

He's unprepared as she grabs him, flings her arms about him, kisses him – Tenctonese don't kiss! – with wild abandon that's almost frightening.

Surprised, he gives in to the delightful, if unexpected, opportunity and draws her closer to him, kisses her with the same fervor, her gasps lost in his mouth. But he doesn't realize the effect of his hands on her back, that erogenous area he'd learned about but forgot in the rush of the moment. His arm across her shoulder blades only unknowingly accentuates her erotic fire.

x

Cathy's body burns, pink flesh turning fiery in spiking lust; it drives her with primal need and she knows she's lost. Driven beyond endurance, she only knows now that she has to have the satisfaction her body craves.

She needs him with an inferno that consumes thoughts, that blasts reason. He's stimulating her mercilessly; what that damnable chord started he won't let her stop! She needs to feel his hard body against her fiery flesh. She clings to him as tightly as she can, driven beyond reason, presses her body to his, her lips to his in the human manner in fiery demand. Moaning in unbearable lust, in fiery need ignited by lightning, she can't resist any more, can't fight the lust, the need that tears at her, that consumes her, that defeats her with its need.

Breaking the kiss, Matt gasps, pushes her away slightly, his strength no match for hers under the best of conditions. Newcomers average 30 percent stronger but she's …. "Cath! _Whoa_! Come up for air!"

In her fevered mind she knows only that he's trying to pull away, to push her away, to disengage his body from hers. _No_! He _can't_ do this, not after exciting her so much. '_Nok' _desone!' she thinks with that fragment of her mind that can think. 'He can't do this! He _can't_ push me away – not _now_!'

_She can't let him_!

Matt, having gone with the flow, is taken completely by surprise as the burning, passionate woman in his arms becomes a lustful tigress. She gets her hands between the halves of his shirt and rips it from his body, she pulls hard enough at his belt to nearly break it as they tumble over–


	5. Nok'desone

Chapter Five  
_Nok_'desone

The Squad Room buzzes with its usual air of controlled chaos when Matt strolls in, goes directly to the small side room where the vending machines stand and selects breakfast: two Milky Way bars.

"It's a wonder you don't get fat," Detective Sergeant Dobson says from the doorway.

"I get plenty of exercise," Matt assures the taller man with a grin. "And lately, I need all the energy I can get." He returns to browsing the selection, orders up a pack of M&Ms.

"Home run last night, huh?"

Matt turns to him. "What do you mean?"

The black man grins. "I know you. One Milky Way, normal. Two and you had a date. M&Ms and you scored."

Matt grins as he walks past his friend. "I ran out of change."

A low whistle follows his stroll over to the pair of facing desks he shares with his Newcomer partner. He tosses his booty upon the controlled chaos that characterizes his workspace, a distinct difference from George's natty organization. Francisco has at least compromised today with a button down shirt by leaving off his jacket and tie. Today holds the promise of only 85 degrees, but this morning Matt doesn't care a bit about the heat.

"You're in a good mood, considering last evening," George observes.

"No, pal, considering last evening I am in a somber mood, because last evening is definitely a cause for high points." He tilts back precariously in his chair, resting his head in both hands and flapping his elbows like wings. "Considering the evening I had, right now I'm practically brooding." He studies the ceiling, not caring much even if it falls down. "So, what did Susan think of Ezri Dax?"

"She told me the next time I get interested in heavenly bodies, I should stick to Sirius."

Matt laughs and says with faux casualness: "I hear Channel Four had an Emergency Broadcast test last night."

x

"Yes," George replies with a somewhat smug smile, "I was glad Buck and Emily had taken Vessna to the park, because it caused a considerable stir at home. Those things always get to Susan." George actually feels a little sorry for what Matt is missing; he'll never know the fortuitous circumstances that can spark special moments between a couple.

Matt looks down at his friend, his hands still locked comfortably behind his head. "Well, it caused a lot of excitement at my place too." George looks at him, openly surprised. 'Score One for the Earthman,' he thinks. "Cathy was visiting when it came on. I turned it off the minute I realized what was up, and I tried to help her, but she was almost going to fall and I forgot about that spot on her lower back when I caught her. She wasn't recovering, not like last time, and then suddenly she was _all over me_." He grins at the memory.

"Suddenly?"

"Well, maybe not suddenly, there was _considerable_ build-up; as I said the lady just was _not_ turning off, but eventually…."

"Desonekarar."

"Whatever. I couldn't stop her, she ripped my clothes to shreds." He grins, not counting the expense. After last night, a shirt reduced to rags is a very small loss. "She was like a wild woman; I've never experienced anything like that in my life!" He lets the chair fall forward. "Man, it was like she couldn't get enough, I actually tried to push her away; I couldn't get her off me with a crowbar!" It finally filters through his lingering delight that George is no longer smiling.

"_Nok_'desone," George says in that peculiar pop/word combination he'd never come close to managing. He also could never reproduce that utterly ominous tone.

"You know, she said that too. I tried to help her, but I–"

"_How_, Matt?" George leans forward as far as he can across his desk. "_How_ did you try to help her?"

Confused, surprised by his intensity, Matt can only say "She was going nuts, like she was aroused, but insanely, _wildly_ aroused; I'd never seen anything like it. I was just trying to hold her on her feet–"

"Your hand on the small of her back."

"Yeah, and I was kind of rubbing her back, you know, up and down…."

"A stimulated Tenctonese woman and you rubbed up and down her speckles." He shakes his head and Matt's outraged that his partner actually looks disgusted. "And if I'm guessing right you also put your arm, say, across her shoulder blades."

"Yeah," Matt's really getting annoyed now. "I was trying to help her, but you people don't exactly come with an Instruction Manual for when one of you starts having seizures, but she wasn't having no _seizure_, she was getting so hot, so out of control, I'd never seen…."

x

He's completely unprepared when George gets up from his chair, comes to him, clamps a vice-like grip on his shoulder, yanks him from his chair and they're across the Squad Room before Matt can even think of fighting. George pulls him into the side snack room and closes the door. Only then does Matt manage to shove George's hand from his shoulder, but he's still too surprised at this exceptional treatment to be outraged.

"George, what the _hell_ are you doing?"

"It _sounds_–!" He stops, takes a step back, literally as well as emotionally. "It sounds like you drove her through desonekarar."

"Yeah, you said that, but what is it?" He's beyond reacting in anger, worry for his friend overriding everything else.

"Desonekarar," George again takes a figurative step back, tries to communicate something intensely private without intensity. It takes him a few seconds to manage this and fortunately, though uncharacteristically, Matt keeps his mouth shut and lets him. "Desonekararcan be loosely and inadequately translated as 'passion fever', but that's a shadow of its true meaning. It takes a lot to do and I'm surprised you managed it before she stopped you, but believe me if it had led to _nok_'desone," again that peculiar popping sound that seems to accent so many of their words, "that is something intensely _feared_ by my people."

They're not the only ones who are afraid. "George, you'd better tell me straight what's going on."

"A woman …" he seems unsure if he wants to reveal this, but Matt can see in his eyes that he's decided he has no choice. "A Tenctonese woman driven into desonekarar, which has several stages, is ultimately wholly incapable of restraint or self-control. She is driven – she is aroused, sexually aroused, and must _satisfy_ that arousal, to carry through the complete process."

"What 'complete process'?"

x

George sighs, deeply frustrated. Why can't Matt read a book? Then again, he recalls, there _are_ no books that cover this. "Listen, you already know that the particular tone you heard, F# above high C, is a very stimulating tone to Tenctonese women."

"Yeah." He'd found out about that secret quite by accident, which is how he seems to learn most Tenctonese mysteries.

"Well, what you had done … look, you know what erogenous zones are."

"Of _course_, I do. I'm not stupid!"

"No, Matt, you are not stupid," he concedes, sorry he's gotten the explanation so bollixed up. Time to take another mental step back. "But listen, that tone is very erotic, but your government doesn't keep it on long enough to do more than stimulate desire. What _you_ did was to get to most of her erogenous zones and _kept_ stimulating her. That's what pushed her over the hill."

"Cliff, George." But he's not in the mood for correcting idioms, not where Cathy is concerned. "Whew, I've had women go nuts on me before, but never like last night. She was like a wild woman; I wasn't even sure she knew me. Take a look at this." He lifts his blue polo shirt, displays a series of scratches that crisscross his chest and stomach. "She did this tearing my shirt to ribbons. She broke my belt. She didn't break the buckle, she broke the _belt_."

x

George's expression is as wooden has his voice as he says quietly; "Tell me what happened before that."

"Well…." Normally he'd tell the story proudly, boastfully, but this conversation is more distressing than …. What had he missed? "She heard the sound, started getting all worked up, I stopped it, she almost collapsed, I caught her. She fell against me and I was holding her up but she didn't seem to be recovering this time."

"You weren't letting her."

"Yeah, I realize that now. But she started kissing me, really working her body,"

"Tenctonese women don't kiss."

"Well, _Cathy _does. Maybe she 'adapted', that _is_ what you people do." He realizes belatedly that he had kissed her, she hadn't kissed him, but the evening is a bit of a jumble anyway. "You wanna hear this story or not?"

"Yes. I have a feeling we're both going to regret it."

Matt, when he walked in this morning, would never have thought that. Now he's worried.

"Well, anyhow, she was getting all excited, but as hot as she was getting, as aroused, there was fear there. I was trying to help her, holding her up, rubbing her back – it soothes _humans_!" he insists in response to George's look, determining never to do that again without permission. "I didn't know _why_ she was afraid but between the gasping and moaning she didn't tell me. But when she was kissing me, she has better breath than I do and I couldn't breathe, I thought she was going to suffocate me and I started pushing her off–"

"And that's when she attacked you?"

"Yeah." Matt looks about, anywhere but in his partner's eyes, while his worry for Cathy mounts. "She didn't stop – _we_ didn't stop. I think we went on all night, at least it seemed, but when I woke up on the living room floor this morning she was gone. I _thought_ she just went to work."

"Matt," George seems to be struggling with conflicting decisions, so common a thing with him when he finally decides to say "there's something about us you don't know."

"No _kidding_."

x

George lets it pass. "Tencton wasn't always the placid place we remember. Anciently, life expectancy was short. Now we live to about 140 Earth years, but long ago that wasn't so. I suppose we averaged about 40 Earth years."

"That's a … big jump."

"Well, to maintain our race, women had to breed, undoubtedly more than they cared to, even with a four month gestation period between male and female. And nature provides a way to ensure survival of the species. You've already seen how touch can drive a woman to sexual excitement, to the first of many stages that together constitute desonekarar, and I have long appreciated your discretion in such matters; but due to our physiologies _sound_ is also a stimulating sensation."

Matt nods, wishing the man would get to the point so he can swallow down the fear that's growing in him.

"Well, to assure propagation, nature took it a step further. I'm only telling you this so you will understand why you have to keep it a secret. If a woman builds through the levels of arousal, of desonekarar, but does not carry through the full copulation, to reach a point roughly analogous to orgasm…. No, I take that back, there _is_ no Human term for it, orgasm is only the beginning. Multiple orgasms, no, not even that, rather the … the full measure of fulfillment, what we call laaspaar; she must continue until she is completely sated."

Under other circumstances Matt might have considered complete satiation through multiple orgasms - or would that be copious orgasms? - to be a good thing, but it sounds like the other shoe is about to drop and it's not going to be a good one. "And if she doesn't?"

"She suffers terrible termination seizures, severe cramps and spasms. It's called _nok_'desone, an agonizing, torturous, horrendous convulsion of all the muscles and organs of the body…. Imagine drug withdrawal coupled with grand mal epileptic seizures and the tortures of your Spanish Inquisition and multiply them ten times worse. Only completed laaspaar can relieve them."

x

"That isn't right," Matt says feelingly. He tries to imagine any woman being subjected to that – and shies away from the thought as quickly as he can.

George spreads his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He has no control over biology. "I understand that Human men, left unsatisfied, experience extremely mild inconvenience."

"Mild?" Matt then realizes George was speaking relatively. He's rarely seen his friend look so grim, and George could do grim better than anyone he knows when dealing with, and having to reveal, the inner secrets of his race. Right now Matt wants nothing other than to see Cathy, but he senses the story isn't over yet.

"Matt, are you certain you satisfied her?"

His initial resentment is aborted by the implications of the question. "She was gone when I woke up; there was no answer at her apartment and I guessed she went to work." He has his cell phone out, but George's hand on his wrist halts him.

"Obviously you must have. I'm just saying, if this happens again, make _certain_ that you do."

x

George is about to leave, but "George, this knock desone is that bad, is it?"

George considers his answer carefully. He'd thought he'd explained that adequately. Normally he would never have discussed the subject at all, it being intensely personal to Tenctonese, but Matt deserves to know these things, both as a trusted partner and especially if he's going to carry on this relationship with Cathy Frankel. In fact, wherever that relationship is in its seemingly on-again-off-again journey, it has certainly entered a new phase now.

"It can be good or bad," he says confidentially. "For a married couple, _when desonekarar achieves its natural result of laaspaar_, as I'm sure it must have between you two last night or you would have known it right then – it'd probably have scared you half to death – it provides the woman with a degree of bliss and satisfaction unattainable under any other circumstances. Then it can be … wondrous. Arousal is one thing; think of multiple orgasms as stage 3, the attainment of laaspaar as stage 9." He pauses significantly. "I understand human women are capable of multiple orgasms?"

"Not like last night. Evening through night, I'm lucky I survived." But then memory washes away delight. "But she wasn't just desperate, she was _begging_ me for help. She was scared. This … this knock desone, I had no idea what she was saying, but it frightened her. She wasn't looking for 'las pa-ar' then, not that I had any idea about it, she was _scared_. I wouldn't have been holding her like I was if she weren't scared of something I couldn't see."

George's expression darkens. "As with anything else, good things can be perverted. On the ship, the Kleezant_sun _used it to force women to mate, to breed, to ensure the slave population. Remember I told you suicide was not unknown; so the Overseers decided it was necessary to maintain the population. Or they would use it to punish."

"_Punish_?" Sexual stimulation as punishment? He's sure he doesn't want to hear this, but if it will help him understand Cathy's fear….

"You see, your Emergency Broadcast System tone test, which remains active for a matter of seconds, results in stimulation but rarely goes beyond a measure of … arousal. The sound affects women's nerves. Well, the Kleezant_sun_ were merciless in their application; they would inflict it upon the slaves until they could not help but breed with the aid of a Binnaum, being utterly unable to resist the stimulation. But if you–" He turns away sharply, fists clenched at his side.

"George?"

x

"If you … restrain the woman so she cannot achieve laaspaar… if she is kept only building through the levels of desonekarar and then all stimulation is _withdrawn_…." He turns back and the horrible look in his eyes makes Matt retreat a step. There's terrible outrage in those eyes, worse fury in that tightly restricted voice, that frightens Matt. "They did it to Suse once."

Matt feels a chill go through his body as he sees the past in his friend's eyes, hears it in his voice.

"Susan can be … headstrong; one day they punished her for disobedience." His voice is tight, his fists clenched tighter. "They put us in adjoining cells, I couldn't get to her, and they used that sound on her, on and on and _on_! They drove her into desonekarar, through the various stages and then _stopped_!"

Matt wants to say something, but against that tightly held fury he has no idea what.

"She could not achieve laaspaar and suffered _nok_'desone. They kept her like that for four hours. For Four HOURS! She suffered constant seizures, cramps, _agony_ none of your people have _ever_ conceived, _every_ part of her body ripped by torment! They kept her in _agony_, screaming, _begging_ for mercy. She would have done anything to stop it - _I_ would have done anything. For four _hours_ I _watched_ her _suffer_!" His hand comes down, his fist slams into the machine beside him, driving a dent three inches deep into the metal corner and he doesn't seem to feel it.

Matt thinks he'd best change the subject. "What about … err …?" He flounders, looking for a word, and since the subject is Susan it's even worse. He can barely bear the thought of that sweet woman suffering such intimate tortures. "If I didn't satisfy Cathy, if say I couldn't … what about … errr…?"

"Autoeroticism?" George seems to pull himself out of the past outrage, but Matt knows him too well. The outrage is still there, only restrained. "No, only full sexual intercourse with a male partner can carry the woman to the 'heights' necessary for fulfillment and to prevent _nok_'desone, the passion seizures. And complete fulfillment generally takes a long time to achieve."

'I'll say,' Matt thinks, remembering Cathy's staggering stamina. "When do the seizures begin?"

x

"The cramps begin no more than a minute or so after the stimulation is prematurely aborted. You could not have missed it – therefore it did not happen. But once begun, they continue indefinitely until laaspaar is achieved."

"By a man. It's not fatal, is it?"

"No, but many have _wished _it were, for it _is_ relentless." George doesn't see why Matt dwells upon this painful and intrusive topic. He's spent all the time he cares to in discussing personal matters with the Human, friend or no. His concern had only been in preparing him for dealing with Cathy in this new phase in their relationship and he's done that. He turns to the door, just wants to leave.

"A woman driven to 'passion seizures' might do anything to stop them, wouldn't she?"

Matt's tone was quite speculative, but George sees nothing worth speculating on this topic. He really wants out of this room and off this subject. Part way to the door, he turns back, his voice strangled. "She would _wish_ to, but other than completed laaspaar with a man there _is_ no hope of easing the seizures, no relief at all."

"A woman alone, no man around, might even be driven to, say, throw herself out a thirteenth story window?"


	6. Robann

Chapter Six  
Robann

George's expression reflects his horror at the realization. "The whistle Frank and Rosalyn Martin spoke of." In hindsight it's horrendously clear what the sound, muffled through the intervening wall, had been; and it also explains why, after Victoria Seacret had thrown herself through the closed window to fall thirteen stories to her death, there had been no one seen leaving the apartment. Whoever had done this to Seacret, he'd been gone long before she died.

"Let's get down there." The Morgue is only a few floors below them, one level below the street, so the elevator deposits there outside the door in under a minute. Lois Allen looks up as they push the Suite doors open.

"Hi, gumshoes, what's the rush?"

"We need a test on the fall victim, Victoria Seacret. She here?"

"Sure; no one's claimed her yet."

"What did you find out about our perp?" Matt asks, picking up a ring binder with a card bearing the victim's name inserted into the front slot.

"Definitely male."

"Thanks a bunch," he says, tossing aside the too-thick binder.

"Don't mention it," Lois advises, still deadpan. Then she becomes more serious. "No sign of a struggle, no defensive wounds, no scratches, bruises, abrasions or injuries; nothing under her nails, between her teeth nor were there any injuries inconsistent with jumping naked through a glass window or from the very hard stop. No trace of venereal disease, HIV, nothing. I put the interval between sexual intercourse and death at thirty minutes to one hour."

"We need you to run some special tests."

"What's up?" George explains briefly. "Never heard of it." Of that he has no doubt. "What do I test for?"

"You look for–" Suddenly George realizes he has absolutely no idea what to look for. A Tenctonese woman in the throes of the escalating arousal of desonekarar that will ultimately result in laaspaar, or suffering the horrendous tortures of _nok_'desone, is unmistakable. But as to what is happening inside her body, chemically, hormonally or otherwise, he doesn't have a clue; especially in what to look for in a day-plus-old corpse.

"I've got it," Matt says, happy not only to contribute but more for an excuse to get some on-duty time in resolving a far more personal issue. "Cathy's a bio-chemist, wouldn't she know?"

"Yes."

Has George seen through both layers of the intent? Probably. Who cares? "I'll call her." He steps away from the pair, definitely needing privacy for this.

x

/Hello?/

He rushes as quickly as he can "Cath it's Matt whatever you do please don't hang up."

For a long moment he fears she has. No matter, he'll drive down to the Medical Center to see her. /I'm not hanging up, Matt,/ she finally says, her words more cautious than he's heard in a long time.

"We need to talk."

/When you find the words for either of us, you'll be sure to tell me?/

"I need to see you. Here."

A long pause, heartbreakingly long. Finally /I don't know that that's appropriate./

"I do. There are some things I need your help on."

/What?/

Okay, maybe after last night she does have the right to sound suspicious. "We have a Newcomer woman here who threw herself out a thirteen story window. George thinks she was suffering from something called…" he can't get his tongue around it. "knock desone."

/What?/

"Okay, I screwed that up royally. George says to tell you 'desone kar arr', 'la as par rar' and 'nk'desone'."

/Matt…/ there's horrible apprehension to her voice, /I can't go there, but I need you and George to come _here_. Right now./

xxx

It's because Cathy Frankel never demands nor imposes that Matt Sikes drops his investigation in the Autopsy Suite and twenty minutes later he and George arrive at the rendezvous site outside the Medical Center's third floor Isolation Ward. As they walk the last few meters to the large maroon double doors, Cathy steps out of a side room at the right to meet them. Under her white Medical smock she wears an equally white dress that closes at her neck and reaches past her knees. Tenctonese don't feel the heat the way humans do, but Matt wishes she'd make some concessions. Then again, she does - when off duty.

She walks immediately to Matt, takes his arms in her hands and briefly touches her left temple to his. To George she presses the knuckles of her right hand to his temple and neither man can miss the distinction as George returns the gesture. "Hi, Matt; Jabo, Stangya."

"Hi, Cathy," Matt says in a tone George finds distinctive.

Rather than pausing, Matt grabs her arm and herds her back into the room from which she'd just come, realizing only too late that it's a rest room. A Women's rest room. "Oh, boy."

x

Cathy's not altogether surprised that he hadn't noticed the universal sign outside; he does tend to miss some things when he lets himself get distracted, and his all-too-frequent air of complete discomfort makes it plain he wants - needs - to talk. So she gets a rein on the hundreds of things she wants to say and waits patiently for him to find the right words with which to begin, trusting in George to maintain their privacy.

"Cathy… George explained to me about … about the dezone carer, the lasparat and the pop-dizone."

As so often happens when he tries to use Tenctonese words, she fights to keep from smiling.

"I, umm, I just – that is, I just wanted to say… that is, I wanted to…."

"Don't worry, I'm _fine_." This time she does smile, quite broadly, and his world seems to switch on. "In fact, it was _marvelous_." In fact, the instant she'd seen him outside, the serxi nerves that surround her vulva had given a mini-flare of delight – and anticipation.

x

"It was? I mean, it was. Of course it was. But, er…." He has that same expression she recognizes from whenever he wants to know something and doesn't really know how to ask. "This dizzonekarar, I mean, what's it like? I mean…."

Her face changes to a mask of utter horror. "Oh, it's terrible!" she whispers. "It's almost as bad as sardonac!" For a moment he's utterly confused - sardonac is a love potion; if the Searchers sang of 'Love Potion Number 9', this is more like 9,000. It had caused uncomfortable moments on his first personal encounter with the amazing drug, but...

She smiles, no longer wanting to tease him, and she puts her arms around him. "It was wonderful." She wonders, however, if he's really getting all she's telling him. Well, he soon will. "But you know; it's a funny thing."

"What?"

"Well, it sort of tickled … a little."

"Huh?"

"Well, I've never done it with anyone with hair." She almost feels guilty; if he'd been off balance before, he's now toppled.

"Well, it's just that when I, that is, when I woke up you were gone. I thought things might be – and then I got to talking with George and he told me all those horrible things about nk-dizone and I remembered you were so scared when you said it and I didn't know what was going on and I was afraid you ran off thinking–"

"_Matt_."

"Wha?"

She smiles; it's not usually so easy to break through to him. "Everything's fine, it was wonderful and I really want to talk about it when we have five or six free hours and I'm not standing in a Ladies' Room."

"Well, er, yes, sure, I–" He shuts himself up and opens the door for her.

x

When they step out, Matt quickly scans the hall, relieved to find no one waiting to use the room. Nevertheless, he checks to confirm this with George.

"A few women did want to use the facilities; I directed them to use another site."

"How?" Cathy asks.

"I told them my partner Matt was strip-searching a female suspect."

Matt has a moment of heart-seizing panic, but he and George have exchanged many attempts at cross-species humor. "Good one, George."

"So," Cathy asks with a tiny smile, "did I enjoy it?"

George gives her that curious penguin arm movement that corresponds to a shrug.

x

Matt has had enough. "Cathy, why did you want us to come down here?"

All her humor vanishes in an instant. "It was something you said reminded me of one of our patients." She turns to the double doors of the Isolation Ward, pushes one open and leads them through. "Yesterday an ambulance brought in a 17 year old Tenctonese woman named Cheshire Katt. Her family had returned home, found her in their apartment."

She says nothing more as they traverse the short hall and enter the third door on their left. Inside, the young woman lies upon an upraised bed, she's apparently asleep, and though she lies under a blanket pulled up to her chest, her bare arms and shoulders are above the covering and her body is bathed in intense ultraviolet light.

An older Tenctonese couple Matt assumes are her parents look up from the other side of the bed, their eyes filled with malevolent mistrust aimed directly at him.

"Manx and Ali Katt," Cathy says soothingly, "these are Detectives George Francisco and Matthew Sikes, LAPD."

"Get _out_," the man commands Matt.

x

"Now, Mister..." he's used to distrust or animosity, not such immediate and searing hatred.

Katt ignores his wife's hand on his arm as much as he ignores Matt's effort to calm him and says to the room in general "Get this _tert_ away from our daughter or I won't be responsible for that happens to him."

"Matt, I think–"

"Sure, George." He allows Cathy to escort him out. "Mr. and Mrs. Katt, I'm sorry for your–" He doesn't know what the man says, but the hatred needs no translation.

Out in the hall, Cathy closes the door. "I'm sorry, Matt, I wasn't expecting…."

"Don't worry about it; he didn't even see me. What can _you_ tell me?"

Cathy's grim manner is so far from her normal élan that she seems a different person. "She was found yesterday in their apartment, suffering from _nok_'desone. She was brought here, we stabilized her, resolved the problem … a rape kit turned up _human_ sperm in her. We sent it to the lab for DNA testing."

"Check with Lois Allen in our morgue, she's also running that test."

"I will."

But one thing – two things actually – bother him. The Emergency Broadcast test had been yesterday evening, not afternoon; and George had said there was no cure for this problem but …. "Cathy, did your people come up with a medical way to solve this, the 'passion seizures', some drug or therapy?"

"No, Matt, why?"

"Well, George tells me the only way to cure this desone thing is to reach laaspaar. How did–?"

Cathy gives him an eloquent look that says 'if you haven't figured that out for yourself, I'm not going to tell you.'

Matt has had enough of sounding like a naïve human.

xx

It's about twenty minutes later, while Matt and Cathy have discussed many things, things that could be said only while doctors and nurses didn't pass back and forth, when George rejoins them. If Cathy had been grim earlier, George is even more so.

"What did they say?" Matt asks.

"Little that can be repeated in front of a lady," he says with a nod to Cathy, one Matt recognizes to be unnecessary; the Tenctonese do not have the same 'chivalric' sense humans do.

"If you'll excuse me, I really have to get back to my department. I'll leave you two to discuss police work."

"We'll talk later?" Matt asks.

"Count on it," she assures him with a private smile and walks down the corridor to the exit.

George waits patiently for Matt to turn, keeping his face expressionless, knowing better than to think he'll have his partner's attention while the woman is in sight. When she's gone and Matt returns to the Sol system, he says: "I spoke to Cheshire Katt."

"Does she remember what happened?"

"She _remembers_ everything. A human male of about twenty years met her at the Supermarket and offered to help her with her groceries. They returned together to the Katt apartment and when they were alone he attacked her. She refuses to tell me any of the details, but she is still traumatized, and having her parents present did not assist matters. It slowed things considerably in fact. I propose we send a policewoman from Sex Crimes and a sketch artist here after visiting hours."

"Hopefully that'll work. Meantime, we should see Hospital Security; have them post guards outside this room. If our man knows she survived – I'll bet a hundred dollars he's the one who made Victoria Seacret jump out her window – he might come back to finish the job. I'll call Grazer, get some female Newcomer officers over here."

He's not concerned about this choice; female Tenctonese won't inspire the wrath of Manx Katt the way male humans would, and trained Officers are quite capable of handling a weaker human perp - assuming he's stupid enough to challenge them.

And if he is ... well, they'll probably leave enough for the Coroner's Inquest.

xxx

It's nearly two hours later when, in the PD Commissary, they can finally grab a late lunch, but it seems an ordeal. Matt, usually very expressive, is wrapped in silent preoccupation while attacking his hero sandwich with what seems to George to be unnecessary violence. George, grateful he's finally managed to talk Captain Grazer into installing at least alternating UV and florescent bulbs, rolls up his sleeves and contemplates his partner, wondering what observation or suggestion he can make that won't be greeted by anger.

They're almost finished with lunch when two women, a plainclothes officer they recognize from the Sex Crimes Unit and a uniformed woman from the Evidence vaults enter, deep in conversation. This should be a perfect opportunity to enlist the aid of the former, as going through channels is slower than necessary. Matt, unlike George, has never mastered the concept of 'recourses unavailable at the present time' when a resource is standing seven feet away, and George considers this attitude to be a practical one indeed. This will, at least, give him the opportunity to, as Matt might say, pitch his ball.

"What gets me is that I don't think we have a chance," slim blonde Patty Johnson says as the women make their food selections.

"When did she come to you?" Louise Fletcher, older and stockier, asks.

"Four days ago. She wanted to press charges, but I don't know. The Newcomer gave no ID for the guy, couldn't even come close to picking him out from Mugs. She admits to giving in but she claims involuntary coercion. Now normally that's great, I can make a case on that, but this time I don't have a thing to go on." She takes a tray but slaps it onto the counter. "Defense would rip her story to bits; there's just no precedent to go into court claiming coercion by some high-tech, sci-fi 'horniness box'."

George starts as Matt almost chokes on his sandwich, an explosive sound that makes the two women turn to them. Matt, still choking and coughing, is on his feet, forcing the words out. "_Horniness box_?"

"Yes," Patty Johnson says when she's sure Matt won't choke to death. "The victim, a Newcomer named Stephanie Atto, claimed the perp turned on this thing and a whistle got her so hot she couldn't stop him from fucking her."

"_Four_ days ago?" Matt demands so sharply the women draw away apprehensively.

"Yes."

Matt turns on George, the pieces falling into place - too hard. "George, the Martins said they heard what sounded like a whistle in Victoria Seacret's apartment before she died; the EB test last was last night but what happened to Cheshire Katt was in the afternoon. Stations don't _do_ back-to-back tests so whatever happened to them _wasn't_ what happened to Cathy. Those are short, this hadda be for a couple minutes." He turns to the women. "Ladies, I think there _is_ a horniness box like your victim described and it's tied in to a death we're working on."

"It's called a Robann," George says flatly.

x

Matt feels as though the air is yanked from his sails and he very slowly turns to his partner, wondering just when police work became so horrendous. "You _knew_ what it was?" he demands incredulously.

"Not then, but I do now. I just hope I'm wrong."

"Huh?" That word, Matt decides, is getting too much of a workout on this case and he's beginning to really hate it.

"The Kleezant_sun_, remember? That's what they used. I told you about it."

Not exactly, but close enough; George'd told him about Susan. "Oh. But what's a Human doing with it?" Even as he asks, he knows the question is hopelessly rhetorical and waves it off. He turns to the women who still stare at him in what he supposes is certainty that he's either on to something or off his mind. Probably the latter. "Can we talk to this woman?"

"Sure. I guess so," she amends, mentally waving lunch goodbye. "Any help you can give I'll appreciate; I'm way over my head with this sla – this Newcomer stuff."

"Fine, let's go. Time's a'wasting."

"Matt..."

It takes Sikes a moment to understand the significance of his partner's tone; he couples this realization with the woman's expression and the empty tray in her hand. "I guess it can wait 'till after lunch."

xxx

Outside a huge A&P Supermarket a Tenctonese woman, clad in backless halter and hot pants against the oppressive heat, struggles with two overloaded brown bags as she walks down the street. She doesn't notice the teenager she passes until he calls out to her: "Can I give you a hand?"

She turns, and at that moment the overloaded paper bags start to slide in her grip. He's there immediately, catches them and takes one in his arms. "Thank you; I can sure use the help."

"Glad to," he assures her, securing the bag in his right arm while his left hand goes to his jeans pocket, checking his toy.


	7. Gastrovere

Chapter Seven  
Gastrovere

Stephanie Atto sits with her husband Marcus on the couch, not looking at Officer Patty Johnson, whom she's met twice already nor the other human, who she hasn't. She glances occasionally at George but mostly she sits tensely, huddled into the black dress that covers her from neck to floor. Her husband, a large Newcomer who looks the part of a typical lumberjack except that the nearest forest is nearly a hundred miles distant, sits with his arm about her shoulders. While not a small woman, Stephanie seems dwarfed by his bulk, but much of that comes from her hunched over, pulled in posture.

None of this scene was unexpected, even in that she pointedly tries to pretend neither human is present by initially speaking only in Tenctonese. Marcus Atto tried to convince her otherwise, but only wound up serving as interpreter in both directions, which significantly slowed things at first.

It was only when her own impatience at not being clearly understood overwhelmed her that she started to open up.

"It happened four days ago," she admits for the fourth time, this time in English, knowing she has no choice but to begin the story _again_. "He – I thought he was just going to help me with my groceries." She tells them of the suspect's having helped her carry packages into the apartment, but then he'd taken something from his pocket and turned it on. "I tried to _resist_. I _knew_ what he was doing but I tried to resist. I really _tried_. I _did_. I DID!"

"We know," George assures her.

"He left her in _nok_'desone!" Marcus exclaims furiously. "I came home from work over an hour later and found her on the floor!"

"I understand," George tells them. Up to this point Marcus Atto had tried to hold his feelings in check but they boil over, and Patty Johnson and Matt Sikes are quickly lost in a rapid three way barrage of Tenctonese, during which Matt can only catch such words as 'Kleezant_sun_', 'robann' and 'gastrovere'. The last is a word Matt knows and hoped never to hear; it refers to a 'vengeance war' in which all other concerns are secondary; it's the ultimate satisfaction of a grievance. Worse than a blood feud, worse than a riot, it always ends only in savage death, usually for a great many people.

Matt hears George fight hard for conciliation and hopes he'll win. Not a prayerful man, Matt prays then. If this is as widespread as he fears, or becomes generally known, a gastrovere may be the result and the number, and variety, of casualties will be staggering. The vengeance that arises from that will cause wave upon wave of reciprocal violence that will rip both human and Tenctonese society in Los Angeles apart and tears will flow heavily on both sides.

Gradually George wins a grudging compromise: a gastrovere will not be called - yet. But Marcus Atto's parting words, clearly intended to be understood by all, are chilling: "Catch this tert. Catch him now or we will."

"We will, I promise. Mrs. Atto, nok'posa. Kesa masvant nelon. (I'm sorry. We'll do all we can.)"

"Naka tam." (Thank you.)

x

Outside and approaching their cars, George resembles a man who has averted disaster by the slimmest of margins.

"So, George, what do you make of our pervert with the horniness box?"

George turns a pained expression to his partner. "Matthew, I wish you would not refer to it as a 'horniness box', or any other euphemism for that matter. It trivializes, or even worse excuses, what has for generations been a terror and torture device against our women and those that love them. It works relentlessly against the nervous system and it is completely irresistible. The women must eventually give in, and _still _risk nok'desone or possibly even Victoria Seacret's fate."

"Okay, okay, I read you; we've gotta get this guy, but we still don't have much of a lead. A male tert with brown hair isn't going to get us to first base. We've gotta get better descriptions; after that sketch artist is done with Katt we've gotta get her to Atto, get something we can distribute."

"And head off gastrovere," George concurs ominously.

"Why?" Johnson demands, fed up with being left behind by the pair. "What the hell is gastrovere?"

"Armageddon, lady. And so far we don't have a clue as to how to stop it."

"Maybe we do," George says meaningfully, pointing to the street sign on the corner. It takes only a moment for Matt to realize the significance of the sign, and when he does he wants to kick himself.

"We're about a mile and a half from Seacret's place and Katt and Atto were both met by someone while carrying groceries. Time to pay another call on Erika McGiver." He turns to Patty Johnson. "Can you get back to the station, pull everything on perps that gain admittance by helping people with packages?"

"Will do."

x

In their car, wiping perspiration from his forehead that this time doesn't have much to do with the oppressive heat, the first thing Matt wants to know is: "George, how long have your people known about that Emergency Alert noise?"

"I heard rumors it was from before the descent. Our ship was monitoring your communications and there's a rumor that your E.A. signal to your people actually _caused_ the Gruza to crash." Matt looks sharply at him, his surprise vast. He'd often wondered just what it was that had caused the 'unexplained' crash. "If so, it was a very effective weapon."

"I'll say." Matt pulls his attention back to his driving. "But after you were down, and out of Quarantine, didn't any of you guys go to the F.C.C.?"

"How could we? Tell your government what, that your system works very well against alien vessels that might possibly attack, and would you please stop using it?"

"Yeah, right."

"While the test is a considerable inconvenience, we generally get plenty of warning, the same warning you do, several seconds in which to either turn it off or let it alone to do its 'thing'." Matt glances at him, decides not to grin, just to keep his eyes on the road as they swerve around more slowly moving traffic.

"We are not that heavily integrated into your world, and the chance of having a Human present when we cannot prevent the sound from affecting us is remote. Even Cathy, in the two occasions she was 'caught short' in your apartment, was not driven to a loss of control and would not have been yesterday if not for your actions. The best, or worst if you wish, one has to contend with is erotic stimulation. In cases like Suse and myself, it is an unexpected bonus to married couples; in your case, well, Cathy was favorably disposed toward you to begin with and would have had the option of choosing how to act."

"If I hadn't–"

"Matt, what happened last night cannot be categorized as 'rape'."

"You're lying, George. Know how I can tell? Your forehead gets pinker."

"Well … be that as it may, when we saw Cathy she did not press charges so I presume you two are going to work last night out like two rational adults, or at least one rational adult and one human."

"Thanks, George."

"But the fact is, if we had come out and revealed what we knew to your government, you can see the potential for disaster."

x

Matt and George hadn't met until five years after First Contact, and the first months of learning about one another and trying to integrate as partners hadn't been smooth. They'd had their share of misunderstandings, mistrust and outright fights - but their interaction had gone far better than had the previous five years of friction between Newcomers and the more militant of Purists.

"No one trusted the other side," George stresses. "Even now there's not a lot of trust. Most humans do not know us as you do. Revealing this weakness might well have led to unrestrained private use instead of this one case, and rapes of Newcomer women would have been rampant and constant – and gastrovere wouldn't be a threat now but a sad history, possibly with Los Angeles being reduced to a ghost town."

"You're a cheerful guy, George. But what about this thing we're dealing with?"

"A robann. The Kleezant_sun_ used them, as you know. There weren't many, and we'd hoped they were destroyed or lost in the crash, because when we did finally get out of Quarantine and our Elders returned to what was left of the ship the robanns were one of the things that could not be found."

"Pretty dense, George. Dense, wishful and _stupid_."

"I know," he admits dismally. "I knew about them, but those of us who knew were obliged to secrecy. I had little choi–"

Matt veers to the right, stomps on the brakes so hard George is almost flung into the dashboard. Several horns blast but Matt ignores them as much as the shouts of passing motorists.

"Listen, George, I am _fed up_ with these secrets, with finding out things by accident or too late! I've had this out with you more than once and I want this to be the _last_ time! I'm your partner – and if you had come to me before with this problem–"

"You would have made a lot of stupid jokes!"

"Only at first! _Damn it_, George, you _knew_ these things existed; we could've done something about them! You know that! You kept faith with your people, what if those women hadn't been strangers? What if you'd kept your mouth shut and it'd been Susan? Or maybe they turn up fifteen years from now and it's Emily? Or _Vessna_?"


	8. Laaspaar

Chapter Eight  
Laaspaar

"Yes, the groceries were here when I got in, three big bags on the table," Erika McGiver tells them, pointing to the square butcher block table near the kitchenette.

"You didn't mention them yesterday," Matt says, unable to mask his aggravation.

"I didn't think they were important."

"In a Police Investigation, everything's important. Where the–" He forces himself to stop, to take a mental step away. "Where did they come from?"

"A & P over on 9th between Kraus and Jackson."

"Why that particular store?" George asks. He's seen numerous grocers serving Tenctonese food within blocks of this building. Newcomers can eat vegetables with no problems, but they cannot digest cooked meats, though in general they can obtain food at any place that sells uncooked foodstuffs. Granted there are special types that Newcomers favor, such as weasel, beaver, muskrat; and organs like spleen or pancreas, as well as mollusks and certain species of insects, but ….

"That was the first big store to offer a full line of human _and_ Tenctonese food. For us, one stop shopping and they're big enough to under-price the specialty shops. But what does this have to do with Vicky?"

"We think," George tells her, "that someone followed her home, perhaps helped to carry the groceries. We think that person raped her, left … and then Miss Seacret killed herself."

"NO!" she insists. "No matter what happened, I _told_ you - Vicky would not kill herself!"

"You told us you teach Tenctonese language and culture to humans," George continues.

"Yes."

"Who taught you?"

"Well, what we didn't learn in College Vicky and I sort of tutored each other."

"Have you ever heard of _nok_'desone?"

She thinks about it, and George isn't surprised by her answer. "No. What is it?"

Before he can answer, Matt does. "A reason to kill herself."

xxx

'Maybe there is something to working in your own neighborhood,' Matt thinks as they leave the building. 'Sorry, Bryon.' He'd been so angry with the Captain for what he'd seen as a capricious decision that he hadn't considered the possible benefits of a cop working where his face is known. That particular Supermarket, well able to claim the designation 'super' by virtue of being almost a square block in size, is within three blocks of his apartment house and within a mile and a half radius of Seacret, Atto and Katt.

"Some teachers," he gripes. "Seacret didn't tell her own partner the good stuff."

"I'm well aware that on your world the lascivious and the carnal are usually among the earliest things taught, but you understand Victoria Seacret's need for discretion."

"I got your discretion. You guys keep so many secrets it's a wonder we ever communicate."

"It does make for some challenging conversations. But what are we going to do about this supermarket?"

"We're going to have to stake that place out," Matt declares. That'll be the only way they can expect to find a white human with brown hair with a penchant for being a 'Good Samaritan' by carrying the bags of solitary Newcomer women.

"We'd better use my car then," George advises. "Yours is too well known."

"No kidding. I'm three frigging blocks away."

xx

Bryon Grazer is no more enamored of the idea of two of his detectives staking out a supermarket until further notice than either of them expected, but his interest is in the expense of inactivity. His contention that two detectives sitting in one place isn't economically feasible is countered by Sikes' that this way the perp will walk into their hands.

Grazer isn't as optimistic, but as he expresses to George "if I don't say 'do it', I know Sikes will do it anyway. At least, with you there, you can keep him in line."

"I'll do my best," George assures him solemnly.

George might have hesitated in going along with Matt's plan, continuous stakeouts of the spot, until he recalls that Susan does occasionally drive across town to the market, and he's realized, with a sudden chill, that he had never been entirely clear on just where this market was.

xxx

The 'market', informally known as the Tenctown A&P though in reality it's nowhere near the ghetto known as 'Little Tenctown', had expanded many times in recent years. Open 24 hours, it was generally crowded in the evenings, and more so on Friday nights.

This is yet another hectic Friday and Cathy Frankel could have, to use a human term, kicked herself for forgetting it. She had intended to simply walk over the three blocks for a few items and yet, completely preoccupied with thoughts of last evening with Matt, her thoughts on preparing a special meal he could not possibly say 'no' to coming over for, she'd paid little attention to the volume of her purchases. It was only when she'd emptied her shopping cart into four large paper bags that she'd realized she had no easy way of getting them home.

Gathering the bags, depending upon Tenctonese strength to make it, she struggles out of the store and into the cooling evening. Already the huge bags threaten to slip from her arms and she prays she can make it home before one - or more - of them split.

"Can I give you a hand, miss?" says a voice from behind her. She turns, all but losing one of the bulky bags which is caught by a young man with short brown hair.

"Oh, could you? I'm really stacked."

He grins. "Yes, I can see that," he says, taking a second bag from her.

xx

A quick trip home with Matt to switch cars turns out to be no such thing when Susan hears their plan. "Must you go out _tonight_, Nemu?"

The wistful tone makes him pause. "Why?" But she seems more distressed that he has to ask.

"We have tickets for Tchaikovsky, remember?" Now he does. She'd reminded him this morning and had done so every evening this week. "I finally broke Buck down to watch Emily and Vessna by assuring him of how he'd look with all his spots ripped off."

George struggles to maintain a firm expression, but Buck's reluctance to pitch in in family cooperation seems finally to have met its match. "I'm sorry, Suse. But you can still go."

"No. It's no fun without you," she says morosely.

"Ah, George…." Reluctant as Matt is to step into domestic issues, he feels guilty at instigating this plan. Not consulting Grazer ahead of time is one thing, not consulting…. "A stakeout – well, who knows how long these things last. Coupla days. Who's to say we'll hit paydirt in the first 4 hours? Why don't you drop me off at home, I'll change and get down there and I'll meet you later."

"Well, if you're sure…." But they can see Susan is even more touched.

"Hey, what's a Godfather for?"

xx

With the generous stranger's help Cathy makes it home, up the elevator and down the short hall to where it turns right, directly to 204, but then she pauses. "Listen, I really want to thank you for this. I couldn't have made it without you."

"Hey, no problem." He makes no move to give back either bag.

"I'd invite you in, but the apartment's really a mess." The apartment is as immaculate in anticipation of company, but she doesn't want to let him know that. Having someone over other than her planned houseguest is….

"That's all right; I really want to just put these down."

She reconsiders, courtesy overcoming apprehension. After all, what does she have to be apprehensive about? He seems like a gentleman, maybe she's just overreacting. 'The incident with Katt probably just spooked me worse than I thought,' she decides.

"Okay." She hands him a third bag so she can get to her keys and unlocks the door, takes the bag and precedes him into the apartment and goes into the kitchen.

She doesn't see him quietly ease the deadbolt closed.

"Do you live around here?" she asks as she returns to take the other bags from him.

"No, I just come out here for my entertainment."

"Oh? What sort of entertainment is that?"

Hands freed, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a white rectangular device. "This kind."

A piercing tone fills the air and Cathy starts, dropping the heavy bags. Horrified, she turns, clamps her hands over her ear valleys, knowing it's a useless gesture. "Neee (No) Not again!"

She feels the effect instantly overcome her as the noise strokes every nerve with sensual delight, igniting her most private passions. It's just like the last time, but so unlike. In cold panic she uncovers her ears and lunges desperately for the device but he's ready, shoves her back and she staggers into the living room, barely able to keep her feet. She covers her ears again, even knowing the sound is working on her whole body and even deafness wouldn't help her. 'Sela! Nas'pon ducliz-za' (Please! Not after last night!) she thinks desperately, feeling the chord play thorough her body, stroke every nerve with the most erotic sensations. It plays along the sensitive speckles that taper down her back, across the serxi cluster of nerves between her legs, tingle at her labia and stroke phantom touches along the backs of her knees, lick at her nipples. She gasps, moaning as the sound caresses her, igniting passion, firing lust she can't fight. "Sela nee!" (Please - no!)

Last night was wonderful – this is _rape_!

x

He advances confidently on her and the closer he comes, the more intently the sound attacks her. Already the passion flares in her, consuming her most intimate being. The muscles about her sulyas twinge and she feels the canal leading upward with it grow moist in anticipation – and she can't fight it. She tries to back away. The sound is magnified by touch, by the vibrations against her very skin; it will destroy all hope of her resistance. Her body heats, grows torrid, even now her vulva tingles, her labia grow moist from the discharge flowing down her canal and her breasts grow more sensitive by the second as the speckles on her back itch to be touched. It feels like someone's making mad, passionate love to every inch of her body, within and without, and the tert's still feet away!

'No! Keep away!' she tries to say, but every breath is a moan of searing passion. It's worse than last night. By this point she'd already had her arms about Matt – but it was Matt, not this sleema _tert_!

The smiling monster is only inches away. She wants to run, to hide, to escape that damned _sound_! 'Keep away! Don't _touch_ me!' but she can't say it, her words are lost in the blasts of sensual sensation that overcome her. His hand reaches out and gently squeezes her breast and time explodes with desire. His touch is worse than the noise, just as Matt's had been better. She tries to push his hand from her breast and searing bolts of lust blast her body. He tweaks her nipple and she wants to shriek as her body flares in sensual delight!

xx

"I don't know, George, I can just feel it in my bones," Matt insists as he pushes open the door to the stairwell on the second floor. It's faster to take the stairs when he has this much nervous energy and tonight he feels he's right, that they're going to catch this bastard. It doesn't hurt either that this door puts them right beside apartment 204 and he'd run into his neighbor by 'accident' yesterday. Well, small disappointment that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. "If we can just pin this guy down, get something more on his methods, we can–"

George's vice-like grip on his arm silences him. "_Shush_! Matt, listen!"

The faint tone filtering through the door is unmistakable.

"Cathy!" Matt pounds hard on the wood. "Cathy, you in there? What the Hell is happening in there? _CATHY_!"

x

The urgent pounding, the frantic voice break through Cathy's fever and even as the tert reaches for her she draws a deep breath and shrieks. "_MAAAAAAAAAT_!"

x

They draw their guns, Matt sets himself and kicks the door as hard as he can but it holds steady. He's about to try again when George pulls him away, takes his place and kicks with force his enraged partner could never hope to match. The door explodes inward, the lock breaks off and they charge in, only to halt immediately at the sight of Cathy being held before them, their quarry using her as a human shield, one arm about her throat, the other hand pressed hard into her lower back, pressing her forward. The relentless sound of the robann fills the air and Cathy, choked by the arm across her throat, is completely overcome, her body writhing in lustful abandon.

"LET HER _GO_!" Matt yells, sighting his gun on the bastard's head. One clear shot and he'll – "Let her go and _turn that damned noise off_!"

"No! I'm walking out of here and you'll let me go–" he shoves harder into Cathy's lower back and she cries out in distressed lust, "or I'll blow this slag all over you!"

She's groaning unintelligibly, panting lustfully, driven nearly out of her mind. Her face reflects terror, but more lust than fear. She's losing this standoff.

With a convulsive gesture Matt puts up his gun, eases the cocked hammer down and George does the same. "Okay, punk, you walk but let her alone!"

Again he forces his gun hand into Cathy's back and she cries out. It's not a cry of pain.

"Drop em!" Both guns clatter to the floor and the men reluctantly move away from the door. Slowly he forces her forward. Her eyes sparkle with compelled passion as he presses her around them and retreats to the door. "HERE!" He shoves her at them and Cathy shrieks as she's shoved in the nerve center of her lower back, but both detectives catch her between them.

x

George relinquishes her to Matt. "I'll get him!' He snatches up his gun and runs out the door, turns right through the closing Emergency door, leaving Cathy lying gasping in Matt's arms, her body burning. He's very cautious in how and where he touches her as he lowers her carefully to the couch. Her breathing is already slowing and he kneels beside her, heart in his throat.

"Cath? _Jelana_?"

"I'm – okay, Matt. Thank you. But sela– please, _get_ him!"

Consumed with fiery rage, Matt snatches up his gun and charges out the door.

Cathy, shaken, can't believe her fortune. She thanks all the gods of Tencton that he'd been there. She'd been driven so hard, pushed further than she'd ever imagined, faced her worst fear, but she's okay. She's actually going to be okay.

She stands up carefully, trembling, starts for the open door – and doubles over from the pain that stabs her. Her abdomen spasms, ripping the breath from her. She fights herself upright, gasping in panic, clutching herself. "No. Please n–" The seizure rips convulsively through her body and she crashes to her knees. "No! _Sela_!" Every organ, every cell in her body is ripped apart and she shrieks, slams to the floor.

xx

Panicked, he runs out of the building and rushes wildly down the street, the slag in pursuit only seconds behind him. He'd never known capture to be so close, and after all his easy victories. Damned _slag_! Damned _spongehead_ _slag_, why'd he have to come home just then? Husband, boyfriend, whatever – he's a slag with a _gun_! He's gaining. Rumors of slag speed, strength – and retribution – drive him even faster, yet there are no alleys, no hiding places, nothing but straight streets and a vengeful slag gaining on him!

One more corner coming up. But – **no**! A car's pulling in front of him and, inside, two slags, cutting him off! He turns right and the other guy, the longhair with the slag, crashes into him!

x

Matt body slams the perp so hard they leave the ground and Matt lands upon him before George can reach the pair, but he stops, standing over them as Matt, kneeling on their breathless quarry, gets his cuffs tight around the perp's wrists and for the first time George decides to take his time remembering the printed procedures and regulations published in the most recent rule book – or was it the issue before last?

Matt hauls the man to his feet and slams him against the brick wall so hard George considers the philosophical issue of whether or not the man's future children will actually feel the impact. He'll take a minute to contemplate this.

"You're under arrest for rape, attempted rape and manslaughter!" Matt announces, wishing he could make it murder. His forearm pins the man's throat to the wall and George considers the compression rate of human flesh and how long it might take to….

"I didn't kill anyone!"

Matt searches the pockets of the motionless man, pulls the robann from his pocket and holds it an inch from his face. "Where'd you get this?" he comes close to shouting the question.

"I don't kno–" is as far as he gets, Matt leans heavily on his throat.

"_Try again_!"

"Some slag!" he gasps when Matt eases his pressure. "Some slag, I don't know who."

"A _Newcomer_ gave you this to use against Newcomers?" 'If this bastard's lying….'

"He sold it to me for $500. Said it could turn on any slag bitch - easy."

Matt yanks him from the wall, slams him again and again. "That * 'slag * bitch' * is * my –"

"Matthew!" George gets in, grabs his arms, pulls him off. Dazed, nearly unconscious, his opponent slides to the cement. "It's over. We got him." Still Matt struggles to reach him. "It's _over_!"

Matt stops fighting and George releases him, reaches for the radio still attached to his belt as Matt searches the dazed man. "This is 1 William 1 5 2." He gives Central Dispatch their location. "We have one under, need backup for transportation."

"1 William 1 5 2 Roger. I show 2 Echo 1 1 3 near your location…." The woman's voice goes on to relay and coordinate information between the units, but neither man pays attention.

x

Matt has finished searching the slowly recovering captive. "No gun," he holds up a rectangular white box, about the size of a television remote control. "He bluffed us with this. Your damned robann."

"Matthew, that is not a robann."

The words cut through his rage. "Whaddaya mean 'not a robann'?"

George takes the device; it takes only an instant of handling it to be sure. The casing is plastic, not any Tencton alloy he's ever seen, certainly not what he'd expected. "It only functions like one, but this is not from the ship. It is of Earth manufacture.

"You mean we're dealing with these things _mass produced_?"

"Yes." But then an equally horrible thought breaks through. "Matt, what are you doing here? You should be with Cathy. She needs you."

"I used the rear door. I knew most people would run out the front and try to duck out in this direction. She said she was all right."

"She _can't_ be."

The world seems to stop at the Newcomer's grim tone. "Oh my God."

xx

Cathy Frankel writhes on her living room floor, weeping in agony at the unending torment, unable even to scream. Wave after wave of searing pain wracks her body with merciless, punishing anguish. She can't even breathe clearly as the spasms batter her, tear her organs apart, rip her flesh from her bones. She cries bitterly, knowing relief will never come. She'd thought in the first moments about what Cheshire Katt must have endured, now she knows all too well as her body is blasted again by the torturous cramps, the pain ripping her body apart. She'd tried to stand only once and had succeeded only in injuring herself more as a violent seizure convulsed her, sending her crashing over a coffee table to the floor.

It's an eternity of pain when, over her cries, she hears the sound of rushing feet pull to a stop outside her door. "Cathy!" Matt's voice calls from the other end of agony. She forces her eyes open past a haze of tears to see him rush to her. He kneels, gathers her up in his arms.

"Matt – please – _help me_!" She bites back a scream as another blast of pain convulses her.

She's laying half on his lap and he's caressing her face, trying to hold her and it's not helping.

"Whaddo I do?"

"You–" she gasps and her chest is ripped open, a huge sword stabs deep between her legs and she screams shrilly, bucking in his arms.

He tries to hold her, to keep her from hurting herself as the scream ends in shattered sobs. He's stroking her arms, her face and nothing's helping. His hands are almost close to her temples and she sobs when he moves them.

"Matt, you–" an explosion of pain nearly sends her twisting out of his arms. He tries to hold her secure and her scream is more crying than yell.

"Cath, _I don't know what to do_!"

She tries to reach for his hands and another seizure rips through her; she clutches her stomach and chest and can't hold back wracking sobs.

x

"Gently caress her temples," a calm voice beside them says. She forces her eyes open to see George unfocused through the haze of her tears. Matt's fingertips slowly, gently stroke her in calming, small circles. He keeps it up and the next wave of pain is less devastating.

"The bridge of her nose, up and down strokes with your fingers, but don't stop the touch to her temples." The pain is still there, sharp but not agonizing and she starts to feel … better.

George is beside them, his fingers stroking counter-clockwise in small circles behind and below her ear valleys and more of the pain gradually fades as her endorphins are stimulated. For about a minute the men work together and the pain steadily diminishes.

"Replace my hands with yours," Matt does so, continuing the soothing stroking, "lean down close, face beside hers and hum."

"_Hum_?"

"A mellow tone. Do it." Matt does and she can reach, with only slight discomfort, to his head, her fingers through his hair and her own hum setting a melodious chord with his. "Now remember, Matt, the shoulder blades, hum up and down her back speckles, all the way, spend plenty of time, don't neglect her temples … or the small of her back … or the backs of her knees … take plenty of time …." He's drawing away from them, growing distant. "And I'll see you in the morning…."


	9. Epilogue

Epilogue

The chime of a telephone directly over his head wakes Matt with the realization that he doesn't _have_ a telephone on his headboard. Movement beside him, the rustle of flesh against sheets reminds him of yesterday even before the ringing stops and Cathy's melodious voice asks "Jabo?" A moment's pause as Matt gets his eyes open. "Hi, Stangya. He's right here."

Matt gets his eyes open but the only thing he sees is his extraordinarily lovely companion. He's never seen anyone look so good in the morning, especially after the vigorous night just passed, but he accepts the phone from her, wondering what the appropriate early-dawn etiquette for this situation is. He doesn't care, he has his own ideas and they don't involve talking on the telephone.

"Hello, George." He's not too surprised at his friend's timing; and his partner is the only one who could possibly have known to reach him here. He _is_ mildly disturbed about being disturbed so early – at all, in fact.

"Good afternoon, Matt." The greeting dispels the tiredness from his mind. He looks at his wristwatch: 1:47. Naturally it couldn't be this bright this early in the morning. "I thought, though you called in sick this morning, that you'd like to hear the preliminary report on that kid. It was, after all, your collar."

"That wasn't necessary, George." But it is appreciated. His partner covered for him.

"'Hey, what's a Godfather for'?"

"Thanks. Shoot." There's a pause.

"The report?"

"No. _Him_!"

"All right. The device we thought would be a robann was purchased from an 'unidentified' Tenctonese male for $500. Though the description could fit any non-female Newcomer, it did include the mention of a tattoo in our language about the wrist."

"Kleezantsun." He's never been able to reproduce that popping sound, but this word doesn't need it – any more than 'Nazi' would.

"It was only one of several offered for sale."

Cathy, able to hear every word, sits bolt upright so fast the blanket flies from her. Terror is etched on her face and Matt's reply is enough the sear the wires all the way to the station. He reaches for her; her shoulder is cold and he wonders if he should give in to his initial response and try to kiss her. Tenctonese don't kiss, though Cathy has 'adapted', but he doubts that it'll make her feel better.

He wonders if anything can now.

x

Best to concentrate on business, grim though that is, and then on the woman beside him. 'God, she's beautiful in the 'morning'. "The Overseers are trying to disrupt your people by giving punks like that bastard the way to rape and torture at will – and the Newcomers can't go to the authorities without fearing an epidemic."

"That is almost exactly what the Department has concluded. Sergeant Dobson and I are confident our perp knows where the Kleezant_sun_ can be found."

"Good. We'll go in there with guns blazing."

"I'll call you when something breaks. Until then, stay with Cathy. There may be … aftereffects."

Seeing the haunted look in the woman's eyes, Matt knows exactly what 'aftereffects' George refers to. He reaches up and hangs up the phone, then puts his arm around Cathy's bare shoulders. He draws her close, her head to his chest, his hand petting her temple.

She sees the crisscrossing scratches she'd inflicted on his chest and stomach the previous evening and gently strokes them, intending to ease any lingering pain as he'd done for her. It only sharpens it, makes him feel more alert, more….

After a few moments the tension in her seems to fade, at least somewhat, and he gradually draws her down with him and closer, turns her to him, his hand stroking along her back, from neck to about where he thinks her spots end. He means the touch to be comforting, but if it can be distracting as well he won't mind. Her bare breasts against him certainly are.

Yesterday morning had ended abruptly. Too often there's been too much left unsaid between them. This time there aren't going to be any things left unsaid between them, no more misunderstandings or uncertainties. "Jelana?"

"Yes, Matt?"

End.

* * *

Author's Note: This story was written and published 20 years ago but then the magazine 'Sardonac' folded and there really wasn't much opportunity to do a sequel. I don't know how much interest there is today in Alien Nation, this was more of a commemorative exercise, but if the number and depth of Reviews indicates a distinct interest in continuing….


End file.
